


work a miracle

by cakesnake, nosecoffee



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: A Car Crash, Alternate Universe, Angst, Best Friends, Betrayal, Blatant Hurt, Blood and Guts and Gore oh my, But also, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergent, Casual Murder, Chance Meetings, Coincidences, Electrocution, Fluff, Flukes, Found Families, Friendship, Gore, Gratuitous Violence, Grief, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Minor Character Death, Multi, Murder, Ongoing Roadtrips, Pararibulitis (Dirk Gently), Picking Names, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Recovery, Slow Burn, Suicidal Ideation, Vague Soulmate AU, Violence, i swear there’s fluff in here, i swear they’re not self inserts, injuries, just to fuck with your head, murder spree, renaming, tragic backstories, vague suicidal thoughts, vague suicide attempt, vague violence, yes we made original characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-16 10:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakesnake/pseuds/cakesnake, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: The universe is angry, the universe is at war with itself. Something happened. Something that wasn't supposed to happen. There was a shift in the balance, and now Marzanna has been sent hurtling down into the depths to compensate for something being flung upwards into the sky, higher than they should ever go. The universe is trying to save someone - Project Icarus - and has decided that Marzanna is worth sacrificing.(The universe makes a mistake, and that mistake needs to be fixed)





	1. the voices died with me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story title from "Uma Thurman" by Fall Out Boy
> 
> Chapter title from "Arsonists Lullabye" by Hozier
> 
> This got kinda out of hand (in honour of the season finale, watch us kill everyone you don't like, except for Ken)

Status report. The lock is broken. The floorboards are more scuffed than they used to be. A window is smashed, and the rain on the broken pane of glass drips in and onto the carpet by the living room lamp.

Someone is crying, deep inside the house.

The receiver from a sunflower yellow rotary phone, mounted on the wall, is hanging only an inch off the floor by its cord. The dial tone is still ringing. Someone tried to call for help.

A man dressed in black is hovering in the shadows of the doorway to the bedroom.

The bedroom itself is in shambles - furniture tipped over, a glass of water shattered on the floorboards, blood on the crocheted rug.

On the floor, on top of the rug, lies a woman with red hair and blue eyes. The freckles that are spattered over her nose and cheeks like a night sky in the middle of nowhere are more stark against her skin than usual, her face growing more and more pale as she continues to lose blood.

The red headed boy holding her to his chest cries harder as her breath rattles unsteadily and weakly.

"Mama." He cries. The man in the doorway takes no pity on them, does not offer to help.

The woman reaches up with a blood slicked hand and strokes the boy's cheek, frowning as she smears blood on his freckled skin. "It is okay, my sunshine." The woman whispers in a wavering, accented voice. "You will be okay. You are strong. And I know you will make me proud."

"Please, mama." The boy pleads of her, gripping the woman hard as if he could make her stay by sheer force of will. The gunshot wound in her stomach makes it hard for her to breathe. "Don't leave me, not yet, just hold on. I'll get help."

"Be strong, my sunshine." The woman says, breath rasping out of her throat. She coughs, violently, jerking in the boy's arms, and blood slicks her bottom lip, sinking into the gaps in between each of her teeth.

The boy's sobs rise into screams, and he pleads with her to stop, to please be well, not leave him, stay, just wait, please stay.

She goes still, goes limp, and blood trickles from the corner of her mouth.

The man finally steps forward, floorboards creaking under his feet. The boy looks up at him with almost identical blue eyes to the woman. They are full of anguish and fury.

"Why?" The boy demands, blue eyes on fire with rage. "Why are you here? Why did you hurt her?"

The man sinks down in front of the boy and the body of the woman, palms open and stretched wide as if to say he means no harm. The gun that he shot the woman with is still attached to his belt. The gun says otherwise. "I'm here to collect you, Svlad. She was a necessary casualty."

The boy is no more than nine years old. Already, the man can see the resemblance between Svlad and Bartine. Bartine, despite being more dangerous than Svlad, had been less trouble than Svlad.

Suddenly, Svlad launches himself across the room, knocking the man to the ground, and holds a shard of glass to the man's throat. "Who are you?" The boy growls. The man stares up, incredulously. "Who sent you? Tell me or I'll kill you just like you killed my mother."

"Don't be irrational, Svlad." The man says, calmly, though he makes no move to dislodge the boy. He seems shocked that someone so small and delicate could knock the wind out of him. "Is this what your mother would have wanted?"

"My mother would have wanted me to take care of myself, no matter how." The shard presses hard to the skin of his throat. The man inhales sharply at the feel of his skin slicing against the glass. The boy cannot possibly bring himself to kill him. The man is counting on that. "Tell me. I know you're here alone. I _know_."

"My name is Osmund Priest." The man gasps, feeling blood trickle against the skin of his neck. The boy looks wilder than Bartine did when he found her, smeared with blood, wild in the eyes, furious. "I work for a branch of the CIA called Project Blackwing who collect subjects like you."

The boy breathes in through his nose, nostrils flaring. "Not anymore." He hisses.

The man has no time to protest before Svlad swipes the glass across his throat and plunges it through his jugular.

~

Status report. The front door broken down. The living room window is broken. The phone is dead. The bedroom is turned upside down.

Hanna Cjelli lies dead in a pool of her own blood on the rug she made for her son. Osmund Priest lies opposite her, a shard of glass sticking out of his throat.

Svlad Cjelli is nowhere in sight. Agent Priest has failed. Project Icarus is gone.

Status report. Mission failed.

~

From then on, he is both the safest he could ever be, and in as much danger as being stuck on the Titanic while it sunk.

Svlad knows they will try to find him again. Maybe with a better collector than before. Svlad keeps running, keeps hiding. He can't look back, he can't go back. What if they're waiting for him?

Sometimes he feels like normal, like he knows that the next step he takes will take him exactly where he needs to go, and eventually he'll end up somewhere safe. Other times all that's on his mind is that the store clerk who's smoking behind the counter at a tiny gas station needs to die.

Sometimes he goes through with it. He kills the person, leaves with blood on his hands. Other times he walks away, defies the universe.

The universe punishes Svlad when he does that. It makes him get lost in the woods when he trusted it to keep him safe and warm and in a place he knew how to navigate.

Svlad learns quickly that the universe very rarely takes no for an answer.

~

Status report.

Project Marzanna has become less enthused in experiments that include pointing out targets and more interested in experiments that test her mental capabilities, such as probability and estimation. This shift and the sudden lessening of faculty deaths have been seen as both worrying and promising. Since Agent Priest’s untimely demise and Project Icarus's disappearance, there has been a lack of good news.

Project Marzanna's new interest in subjects that Project Icarus was adept in could mean that Icarus has 'fallen out of favour with the universe' as Marzanna put it. Col. Riggins has stated that Marzanna's increasing willingness to participate in experiments could mean good things for Blackwing.

~

Project Marzanna curls up as small as she can in her bed. Maybe if she makes herself too small, they'll forget she's there, and they won't experiment on her anymore.

The war going on in her head hurts her. That never used to happen before, but now it's all she can feel. It stings like jellyfish all over her skin and makes her jolt and writhe and spasm in pain like what happens when they attach those electrodes to her skin and she gets a question wrong.

The universe is angry, the universe is at war with itself. Something happened. Something that wasn't supposed to happen. There was a shift in the balance, and now Marzanna has been sent hurtling down into the depths to compensate for something being flung upwards into the sky, higher than they should ever go. The universe is trying to save someone - Project Icarus - and has decided that Marzanna is worth sacrificing.

She can't remember her own name.

She curls up small and cries.

~

He stops being Svlad somewhere in between being ten and being fifteen.

Somewhere in those five years he forgets his name.

Five years on the run from people who would surely lock him up for all that he's done, five years on the run from the past, trying desperately to forget what he's done.

The universe lets him get away with all of it. No one ever catches him when he's washing dried blood off of his hands in a truck stop bathroom, and no one ever catches him taking bags of crisps off racks, even if the alarm goes off as he runs out of the store.

He gets away with too much, he thinks.

He sleeps in ditches and abandoned houses and motel rooms when he stumbles upon enough money to sleep in a motel room for a night. He runs from place to place, he hitchhikes, he steals and kills and runs and forgets.

He hopes this is what the universe wants, because he can feel himself growing stronger, and he can feel someone on the other end of the scale growing weaker.

~

Project Marzanna is fifteen and she decides she's had enough.

The problem is that the universe won't let her die, and neither will the doctors who burst into her room once they realise what she's done. Once they realise they shouldn't have given her cutlery for good behaviour, never mind that it was plastic. It did the job.

“You don't want me dead, but you keep making me suffer!” She screams, when she wakes up, strapped to her bed. Project Marzanna struggles against her ties. “Take my powers away or kill me! Take it away! I don't want it!”

Doctors watch her, horrified behind a pane of glass. The universe watches on, without pity, and makes no move to take anything at all from her. It is a necessary evil that she has to suffer like this. It will all make sense, soon enough.

The universe knows this will not stop her, but Project Marzanna cannot be hurt. Not even by herself.

It won't let her.

~

It’s been so long, he has forgotten his own name. Even if he could remember it, he wouldn’t want to. He doesn’t want to be connected to the boy who let his mother die and took a life. He can’t be connected to that. So he leaves his name be. He doesn’t need it.

But what he does know is that he is supposed to be here. The building looms large over him, and the grey of the concrete makes him want to shiver. It looks so cold.

He needs to go inside, but he doesn’t want to.

The rest is a blur, he goes inside. He runs. At some point he kills someone, and he is drenched in blood. The runs down hallway, evading people as much as he can. There is a door, he hasn’t seen it yet, and he knows he will have to open it, not knowing what’s inside.

That thought is the worst bit of it.

There is nothing that couldn’t be behind that door. The possibilities are limitless, and that scares him shitless.

Finally, he comes upon the door, which looks like all of the other doors in this hallway, and in the facility, but there’s something about it that means he knows he has to open it.

Alarms start blaring as he touches the door handle. So he throws open the door, and all of a sudden a calm overtakes him, and the world is still. Because she is there.

He stands over the girl, knowing that his fate, his life is inevitably tied to hers. That somehow he had evaded what has seemingly broken her. She looks up at him, gaping, speechless.

  
They recognise each other as old friends would without ever having met before.

“You’re one of the others.” They say in unison, and by some trick of the universe, that isn’t the strangest thing about this meeting. The strangest thing is the familiarity that hangs in the air, despite the fact that they could never have met before. “You’re like me.”

But it’s clear to him, even now, seconds after meeting her, that she isn’t like him at all. She is desperate, and crazed, and it shows on her face. They would have been so similar, he thinks, had this place broken him and captured him the same way that they had caged and shattered her.

“You’re not like me. You’re something different.” She says. He nods.

Her eyes hold a desperation that makes him want to defend her from any evil that might come their way. He wants to ask her what they did to her, to hold them accountable.

(He wants to know what he narrowly avoided.)

“Take it from me.” Her voice is small, and scared, and he thinks, that, like him, she doesn’t want to kill anymore, no matter how much the people who end up dead deserve it.

“Take the patterns, take the fuckin’ hunches, I can’t take knowin’ I’ll be here forever.” Her voice is gravelly, but the raw emotion behind it, he understands. She’s pleading with him and with the universe. “I want to be free.”

He takes a step back.

She truly isn’t like him, she wants the death. She wants to always know who needs to die. She wants blood on her hands and the wind in her hair.

(He wonders if he’d want the same thing if he were in her position. If he had lived in the dark ever since Priest came for him.)

He nods in agreement, and kneels in front of her, tuning out the buzzing, blaring alarm in the hall. He unbuckles the ties that bind her to her cot and once she's upright again, takes her hands, roughened, nails worn down by clawing at the wall, at the sheets, at the leather ties around her wrists, and tries with all his might. He begs the universe to take from her, and give to him.

And nothing happens.

And someone is coming.

A decision needs to be made, and she looks incapable of making it. So he makes it. He will not be trapped here like an animal, and neither will she.

“Come on.” He pulls her to her feet, and drags her down blank hallways, following his hunches to the exit, pulling doors open at random as he goes.

No one deserves to be trapped here.

“You didn’t take it, you lied!” She cries, sounding betrayed, sounding broken.

“I don’t know how,” he replies. “I don’t think I get to make that choice.”

She’s about to yell at him again, when they are cut short by a group of men in protective armour, holding weapons that, to the untrained eye, seem entirely disproportionate to the scrawny eighteen year olds in front of them. But these men know what they’re up against.

He watches the girl, he still hasn’t learned her name, look around and set her eyes on the fire alarm, incredibly likely to set off the sprinklers he can see embedded in the ceiling.

They can’t be hurt, the universe won’t allow them to be hurt until they have completed their job. For now, he is invincible.

“ _Marzanna!_ ” A voice shouts, and the girl freezes, and her face becomes fierce. He may now have a name for her, but he knows that this is not a name he will be using, just by the looks of her face.

“ _Marzanna, I wouldn’t do that if I were you!_ ” The voice says.

He realises that it’s coming over the PA System, that the person belonging to that strict, authoritarian voice isn’t here. He’s glad, though he doesn’t know what they could do to him if they were here.

Marzanna raises an extended middle finger to the ceiling, and pulls the fire alarm.

The hallway explodes into action.

The noise is first, the alarm. The gunshots. The shouting.

And the bullets start whizzing past them, barely, miraculously, missing them.

Something in him awakens, and he pounces on the first man he meets, and easily dispatches him. He knows that it’s going to be a tedious and stomach rolling experience, trying to get the blood out from under his fingernails after this.

His brain skips over the part where he savagely and instinctually kills many people, all of whom his intuition tells him deserve it. Next thing he knows, he is standing in a pool of blood, in the middle of a sea of bodies.

“We have to go. We have to get out of here.” He says.

“But you _said_ -“

“Someday, but I don’t think it’s possible right now. I think the universe wants it how it is. Don’t worry, I hate it too.”

He takes her hand, and she smiles when he winces at the squelching, their bloody hands squeezing together. “Gotta have a stronger stomach if you wanna keep this bit.”

“I really don’t want to. Not my choice though.” He reminds her.

They run, and if they’re followed by four men who haven’t seen the sun since they arrived here, and a moth, and so many others, they don’t notice it.

Because freedom is only on the other side of those doors.

  
~

The universe gives them a reprieve. They run as far as they can through the dense forest surrounding the Cage and then there's a main road and a motel, and they'll be ready if anyone from the Cage comes knocking.

They get a room, and they settle down on the double bed, taking turns at showering, and he has to stop her from drinking the shampoo. And they're clean and sitting on the bed, and The Simpsons is playing on mute on their TV in the otherwise dark room.

“What's your name?” The boy asks. She turns to look at him.

He looks different, here. More relaxed, but weirdly pale in the glow the TV gives off.  
“I don't remember.” She tells him, honestly. Her hair is still a bit wet, but she's not covered in blood anymore. “They called me ‘Project Marzanna’ back at the Cage, but that's not my name.”

The boy cocks his head to the side, and she can see fading red freckles on his skin. He's thin. Almost as thin as her. She'd think he was starving the way she was. She doesn't know, for sure, if he is. “Why don't you choose one, then?”

“Choose one?” She repeats. It's a foreign concept. She had only ever been ‘Project Marzanna’. She looks back at the TV.

“Yes. Pick a name, one they can't use against you, one you want.” The boy elaborates, gesticulating with his hands.

She pushes her tongue against the inside of her cheek, plays with a loose thread on the quilt. The cartoon flashes in front of her eyes. “Bart.”

He nods.

“Just sounds right.” Bart looks back to the boy, the one who broke her out, the one who shares the universes favour, the one who she's probably indebted to. The one who proved the universe wrong. “What about you? Ya got a name?”

He looks confused. “I don't remember.” He replies and Bart laughs. That's something she hasn't done in a while. It's grating and jarring and wrong, but she laughs all the same.

“We’re in the same boat, you and I.” She bumps their shoulders together, and laughs some more. “Why don't ya pick one, then?”

He furrows his eyebrows. Thinks in silence for a bit. Bart turns back to the TV. She falls asleep.

No night terrors plague her. She's dreamless, weightless, peaceful for the first time in years.

When she wakes he's still there, and Bart’s not sure why that makes her feel relieved.

“Dirk Gently.” The boy says to her, once he sees her awake.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Bart asks him.

“It's my name. Dirk Gently.”

She scoffs. “Sounds dumb.”

“You sound dumb.” He sounds offended. His voice gets higher pitched, and it takes all the effort she has not to laugh at the overly defensive tone. “You don't even have a last name.”

“Yeah I do! It's…Curlish. Bart Curlish.”

He stops, and seems to think for a moment, and she readies herself for whatever quip he throws at her. But he doesn’t. There’s no joke. His voice is sincere as he says, “It’s nice to meet you, Bart Curlish. I’m glad you’re free now.”

And it strikes her that for the first time in her memory, she really is free. Of the nightmares, of the testing, of that painfully small, dark room, of the silence of the world when they closed the door.

They said, in there, that she is a force of nature, the only constants were her and gravity, but they never set her free to let her find that out for herself. It was only a matter of time before she met the real world. She realises. If she is truly a force of nature, a tool in the hands of the universe, there is no way that she could have stayed there for the rest of her life.

There is a feeling deep in her would that she doesn’t have a name for, but it makes her feel constantly like the moment before sleep when your eyelids get heavy, and your limbs relax, and everything is okay for a moment. She never wants it to leave.

“Me too.”

~

They travel together for a while, a couple of months, Dirk thinks, but they’re not really keeping track. They take turns driving the car they stole from the motel. Neither of them really know how to drive, and probably go too fast half the time, and break countless laws on a daily basis. They figure if they’re apprehended, that will be where they’re meant to be.

They develop what they call the ‘Dirk Gently Method’ of driving. They follow a car that looks like it knows what is doing, until it turns off, and if the turn doesn’t feel right they find a new car to follow. They never end up in the wrong place.

The worst bit, Dirk thinks, is that apart from their growing friendship, they make a deadly team.

Like when he was travelling on his own, at nearly every stop there is someone who the universe has decided is better off dead.

He gets used to the sensation of blood drying on his skin, as he seems to have a penchant for messy deaths. It’s horrifying, watching the rust colour of it swirl down the drain of a motel shower.

Bart, on the other hand, often keeps things neat. A handgun here. A throwing knife there. Her messiest weapon is a machete, and when she reaches for it, he knows to stay out of the way. When she chooses that, she’s in a particularly savage mood.

But there comes a point when travelling together draws more attention than is safe. They notice cars following theirs, with singularly focused people at the wheel. Often if they stop anywhere, there is the eerie feeling of being watched, though they can’t place it.

And then the universe starts making staying together an uncomfortable experience. Motels either have no rooms, or only have a single bed room. It wouldn’t be a problem if Bart didn’t kick up a storm in her sleep. They end up extremely sleep deprived, taking naps on the sides of roads, nearly falling asleep at the wheel, and bickering all the time.

So they decide it’s time to part ways.

They spend one last night in a motel, the universe seeming forgiving, letting them have one last night of calm. They steal another car, and play ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ for who gets the new car.

Dirk gets the new car, and he feels a little sad to see the old one go.

Hugging seems wrong, so he nods at her, and she nods back. There are no words that fit quite right in their mouths, so none are said.

And he drives south, watching her car disappear north in the rear view mirror.

There’s an odd sense of melancholy in the whole event. He finds it feels oddly like saying goodbye to a sister.

~

Bart hates the patterns. Bart hates the hunches. Bart hates the paths and the coincidences and the déjà vu.

Most of all, Bart hates waking in the middle of the night, the edge of a forgotten memory that isn't hers in her head. It slips like sand through her hands, as she wakes, leaving her gritty and irritated.

She makes the most of each kill, well aware that, at any moment, the bad man who is not the servant to god that he claims to be will drag her back to the Cage. He will not be so lenient this time. The universe whispers for her not to worry about that bad man, and tells her to turn right, instead.

Bart never follows the other instructions. Even if it means her car breaks down, or a holdup goes wrong, Bart will never follow the invisible paths that the universe turns her on to.

~

Dirk grows older, and older still, and shows the time passing with the length of his hair, and the fact that his face, which has kept fairly smooth for the majority of his years, is starting to sprout facial hair. But all of this means nothing, really. Time may be passing, but he is never certain how much.

He knows, though, that it has been long enough that he doesn’t remember the exact twinkle of his mother's melodic voice, or remember the exact feeling of her soft hands smoothing down his hair, warding away a nightmare. It has been far too long since he hugged her. He doesn’t want to think about the fact that he made sure he would never hug her again.

He is tired, and his body weary, and he has only known running away for so long. He aches to have a little flat, maybe have a cat to keep him company, and a window with a comfy chair by it, perfect for reading on a Sunday morning.

Mostly he just wants to stop running.

He wants to settle, and have just one friend, Bart maybe, and be allowed lazy days. Be allowed to stay still for more than one night.

He wants so desperately to stop being a tool for the universe to act through.

He learns, through his travels, that his name has a meaning. A ‘dirk’ is apparently a long dagger, and he realises that this is why the universe delivered him that name.

He is a weapon in the hands of a cold, uncaring reality, an unstoppable force punching through people, and leaving only death in his wake. His purpose is the same as that of a dagger. He is somehow both the assassin and the weapon, wielded by tangential coincidence, and he is just so tired.

So tired, in fact, that he falls asleep at the wheel, and his car crashes into a tree.

When the crash is called in, he is taken in to a local hospital, somewhere in the south of Maine.

And so begins his life of flitting from problem to problem, solving mysteries, and murdering, albeit, mostly accidentally. He is so tired of killing.

~

She feels it. In her chest. In her mind. Feels the way he droops. Hears the screeching of the tires against wet asphalt. Hears the smashing of the windshield, feels the airbags.

Bart doesn't know how they're connected, exactly (“ _Everything’s connected, Bart. Don't you see? One thing will lead to another and that thing will lead to another, and there is no end, but that's okay. Everything is connected!_ ”) but she feels when his car crashes and she has to pull over to stop herself from crashing.

The last time she felt him that clearly was longer ago than she'd care to admit. It's just shocking that after all these years she feels the universe grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he listens. The universe has never been so curt with Bart. She supposes she's never given it a reason to be.

Bart hears a crinkling noise in the otherwise silent convenience store she's just held up and turns around, gun cocked and aimed. The guy behind her - short, dark hair, wide blue eyes - raises his hands above his head.

“Don't shoot!” He cries, and the look of palpable fear on his face is almost enough to make her hesitate. The rest is the voice in her head whispering _wait_.

Bart doesn't understand. The voice in her head has never said _wait_. The voice in her head has never hesitated never once regretted nor forgiven. Why is this different? Why should now be any different?

Still, the voice pleads with her to wait. Bart lowers her gun, stuffs it in the waistband of her ripped pants, registering the look of relief on the man's face. The voice has never been wrong. She's only ever met people she's needed to kill and she's only ever killed people who needed to die.

(Dirk was the one exception, until now. Why is this man any different?)

It is clear the universe doesn't want him dead, for whatever reason. Bart sniffs, and nods at him, before hauling her rucksack full of stolen candy over her shoulder and walking out of the store. That man stinks of a plan the universe is hatching, and Bart is well aware of the effects the universe's plans can have.

The further she is from the blue-eyed man in the homemade t-shirt, the further she is from Dirk and his car crash that makes her shiver down to her bone marrow, the better.

~

His first case is simple, merely a missing cat. And then it becomes much less simple, because his investigation reveals a plot by the city council that involves the stealing of cats in order to get people up in arms about community, and how uniform it should be.

He finds it a little revolting, the council attempting to chase people they think don’t belong there out of the town due to their own xenophobic views, but it’s not his community, so he doesn’t say anything opinionated. Merely states the facts.

In any case, the plot is revealed, and all pets are returned safely to their owners, and by the time he is leaving town - a whim directing him west - he hasn’t yet come upon one single soul who needs to be killed.

He takes the car he crashed, repaired as best it can be, and starts on a highway that leads him southwest. And the car promptly starts spewing smoke from the bonnet, and he takes that as a cue to pull over and get out.

He pulls up behind a parked car on the shoulder of the highway, and gets out of the car, coughing and spluttering the whole time, looking up to make eye contact with the man who is currently in the process of burying a body in the ditch beside the road.

“Oh god.” Dirk says, and neither of them move for a moment.

The man's face transforms from mildly confused, to fierce and bloodthirsty, and Dirk knows in this moment that this situation is one of those rare ones that one could describe as ‘kill or be killed’.

The man advances, his shovel in one hand, raising the other one, filthy with mud and blood, as if to strangle him. The whole situation seems to move impossibly slowly as Dirk gropes around for something with which to defend himself, and, bending down, finally, finds purchase in a fairly long tree branch.

He hold the branch at eye height in front of his attacker, as a warning gesture, rather than a threat.

He can tell by the look on the man's face that that person is the first he’s killed, and by no means his last if Dirk doesn’t stop him once and for all.

In this case he is happy for the universe to take control, to handle him as a weapon. People as evil as this shouldn’t be here.

The man stops for a moment, laughs, and continues to walk toward him.

And the rest is a bit of a blur.

He is hitting, whacking, stomping, clawing, and, finally, he takes the shovel from the man, and hits him until he goes still and his skull resembles an eggshell that came into contact with a three year old, more than it does a skull.

There is so much blood, and he is so tired.

He doesn’t know what to do now that the man is dead. If he goes and tells the police, he is more likely to be suspected of a crime than the man he just killed. But if he tells no one, he gets the worst feeling that the person at the bottom of that ditch will never be found, and will never have anything better than a clandestine grave.

He resolves to call from a pay phone in the next town over, and leave a tip, giving him the best of both options.

He takes the man's car, which, much to his disgust, smells strongly of cigarette smoke, and - he thinks - blood.

But it’s much better than a car that might very well explode at any moment, so he sets his eyes upon the road, and speeds off. The farther he is from that scene, the better, he thinks.

~

Bart really hates holding this guy at gunpoint. Even if he's the only one aware of the gun this time. (Everyone except for him in the convenience store was dead, but she was much more obvious with the gun that time.)

The man freezes at the feeling of the barrel of the gun against his side. He stops chewing on his bite of waffle. He stares at the wall behind the counter that they're sitting at, eyes wide and alarmed. He's not good at hiding that he's in mortal danger.

“Why are you following me?” Bart asks, and picks his waffle up off his plate, syrup dripping down her arm. The man with the too-blue eyes watches as she takes a bite of his waffle. He says nothing. Bart presses the gun a little harder into his side. “You've seen me kill before. Tell me or I'll shoot you right here.”

He fidgets, obviously uncomfortable, and turns to face her, setting his cutlery down beside his plate. Bart tosses his waffle back onto his plate. Her hand is sticky.

“I might shoot you anyways.” She continues, absently.

“That doesn't give me much incentive to tell you, then, does it?” The man finally replies. Bart cocks her head to the side, her gun resting against his stomach.

“Huh?” She says.

“If you're gonna shoot me anyway, is what I mean. And I'm not following you. Trust me, after what happened in that convenience store, I really didn't want to see you again, much less seek you out. I don't have a death wish.”

“You must, because you're lying to me. Who sent you? Priest? Someone from the Cage? I'm not going back. They can't make me.”

“Who the fuck is- the _cage_ \- sent me? I don’t know what your deal is, lady, but you _have_ to know how crazy you’re sounding right now.” The guys voice goes up an octave, maybe two as she presses her handgun further into his abdomen, and he inhales, clearly panicking.

“ _Why are you here? Why are you following me, answer me!_ ” She whispers with meaning.

“I’m not, I’m not following you, I just wanted to go out for breakfast this morning, just a feeling, you know-“

She recoils, gun shoved back in her waistband in seconds, teeth bared like he had personally threatened her.

“You stop followin’ hunches, because I don’ want you around, okay? I don’t want anythin’ to do with the paths, so you stay away from me. You feel a pull, walk the other way, or I swear I will shoot you next time I see you, whether or not I feel like I’m s’posed to.” She snarls, and he sinks deeper into his seat, further away from her and she hops out of the chair and stomps out of the restaurant.

~

The feeling is too strong to ignore. Dirk halts and turns around, going down the hallway until he's standing underneath the man on the ladder, unscrewing a lightbulb from the ceiling.

“Hello!” He says and the man on the ladder gives a shout. Dirk steadies the ladder so that it doesn't fall and the man steadies himself with a hand against the roof.

“Jesus Christ!” The man cries. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

Dirk cocks his head to the side and grins up at the man. “I seriously doubt that, unless your family is prone to them. I'm sorry for startling you, I just have a few questions I'd like to ask you.”

The man screws the bulb back in and climbs down off of the ladder. “Okay.”

“What's your name?”

“Ken.” He replies raising and eyebrow, and looking around somewhat nervously.

“Have a last name?” Dirk asks, trying to keep cheerful, even though this man seems to be intent on being as rude as possible.

“Why do you want to know?” He crosses his arms over his chest defensively, and takes a small step back. Dirk pretends like he doesn’t notice.

“Last names can often be very interesting. For instance, my name is Dirk Gently.”

Ken takes a few more steps back, and gives a smile like he’s done with this interaction, despite dirk only just getting to his line of questioning. “Yeah. You sound crazy. If you'll excuse me, I have to-”

“No, wait! I'm a detective!”

“A detective?” He stops in his tracks, and looks at him a little warily, but it’s a lot more trusting than before.

“Yes. Do you work here?”

“No,” He shakes his head, “I'm just an electrician the hotel hired.”

“Have you seen a pair of ruby slippers floating around here?”

“Ruby slippers-?” His voice is full of confusion, so Dirk decides to elaborate.

“And when I say floating I legitimately mean floating.”

“I...no. I haven't. Sorry, Dork.” Ken starts backing away again, this time much faster than last.

“It's ‘Dirk’.”

“Okay. Have a nice day.” Ken waves like he’s waving to a little child in a schoolyard, and walks brusquely the other way.

 _Very unhelpful_. Dirk thinks, and catches a glimpse of something red in the corner of his eyes, just rounding a corner. Dirk runs.

~

Bart gets out of her car the moment the shifty looking electrician drives off. She doesn't like the look of him, but the universe didn't want her anywhere near him. What's the weirdest thing about that, is that it didn't want her to kill him. It just didn't want her making contact with him.

Which has never happened before.

Bart stuffs her most recent handgun against the waistband of her pants and marches into the hotel. “I want to book a room.” She says to the man behind the counter.

He stares at her. Bart scratches at her hand and then realises she's still covered in blood from her most recent kill.

She clears her throat. “I was just at a costume party. It's all fake.” Bart informs the man behind the counter.

He nods, slowly. “As what?” He asks.

“Zombie.” She replies, scratching at her arm. “Duh.”

This is almost the exact moment that the elevator dings and a man in a red jacket flops out of it, grappling with what looks to be a pair of sentient, floating ruby slippers. He makes a distressed noise as they drag him upright and slam him into the wall.

Bart recognises him. She lets the shoes knock him around for a bit, before he manages to stuff them in his giant bag and return to an upright position.

“Gently.” Bart says, in greeting.

He looks up, and he squints at her for a second before his eyes go wide as saucers. “Curlish. Bart!” And then he rushes her, catching her up in an all-engulfing hug that only makes her a little uncomfortable.

“Ya stealin’ someone's footwear?” Bart asks when he pulls back. Dirk gives the huge bag tossed over his shoulder a dirty look.

“I'm _recovering_ them.” He says, in a voice that suggests they were not easy to recover, in the first place. “I'm being paid, quite handsomely, I'll admit, to get them back to their owner.”

“Oh, yeah?” She asks, and wraps an arm around his shoulders, turning him back towards the elevators. “Why don't ya tell me all about it?”

Dirk lets a smile creep onto his face. “Sure thing.”

“Uh, ma’am?” Calls the man behind the counter. Bart swivels to look at him, a deadpan expression on her face.

“What?”

He looks half-miffed, half-bewildered. “Aren't you going to book in?” And he tugs at his collar, as if he's having a hard time breathing.

She smirks, the corner of her mouth turning upwards. “Nah. I'm rooming with Gently.” And with that, they sweep into the elevator, more elegantly than they've ever been in their lives, dissolving into laughter once the doors close.

~

When he leaves Bart, it feels like leaving a part of himself behind, and taking piece of her. He doesn’t know whether it’s because of the attachment he’s formed to her, or if it’s the fact that they share powers and shouldn’t. It doesn’t really matter.

All it means is it’s always a little bittersweet to wave goodbye to her.

But this time it feels different. It feels like he's not going to see her for a long, long time, and he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not. She waves hesitantly back at him as he climbs into his beat up car.

(Dirk can't deny the universe, though. Lesson learned, there. Make a mistake, don't play by the rules, stray off the path, there's no mercy waiting. It's something he probably should have picked up earlier. It's just that he's never actually wanted to break the rules before.)

He was right about receiving a handsome paycheck for returning the ruby slippers, and is currently driving around with a duffle bag full of cash. Cash he has no idea what to do with.

There’s something to the idea of setting up shop, actually creating an agency for his mysteries and settling down. It’s incredibly appealing. But he knows the pull in his soul won’t let him sit still long enough to settle anywhere.

He hasn’t lived anywhere that wasn’t his car or a motel for so, so long. But it’s just out of the question. So he resolves to use the money to get a haircut, clear his vision. It’s getting annoying now, and it might be nice to start with clean hair.

He smiles at her silhouette getting smaller in the rear view mirror. Dirk hopes she knows, somehow, that the constant reminder of her keeps him going. The fact that if he died, she'd be left alone with the patterns _and_ the list, all by herself.

Dirk kind of hopes she knows that he's doing it for her. If it weren't for her, he'd have given up a long time ago.

~

She’s lying on the ground, electricity still running through her veins, wondering why these men were still circling her rather than converging while she’s still incapacitated. She has no control over the shaking of her hands, the shock bringing back the trauma of her days in The Cage, her brain struggling to fight its way out of that scared mindset.

She’s outside now, where she isn’t controlled by a strict schedule, but rather by the whims of the universe. These men have no power over her here, and she can just as easily destroy them while shaking as she can at full health.

She starts with the smallest guy who is steadily emptying his clip while missing her, shaking in his military issue boots. She takes his gun, and upon finding he has emptied it of bullets, uses the butt of it to knock him down, and looks away she uses her own heavy boots to cave his face in.

She’s going to leave a trail of blood away from this scene. She knows she won’t be caught unless the universe wills it.

She turns to take down the next guys, who puts his hands up, and says: “Marzanna, don’t! Just tell us where Icarus is, and we’ll leave you!”

She cocks her head. She’s never met the famed Icarus they used to gossip about in the hallways, and she has no idea why this man’s last ditch effort to save his life is to ask her the whereabouts of the project who cost her her freedom and her strength when it counted the most.

“I don’ know any Icarus. Bu’ I know you gotta die-“

“Icarus! He was the one that broke you all out. You’ve done your time, it’s time Icarus does his, don’t you think?”

Her whole world freezes. He can’t possibly mean Dirk. There’s no way. Because Dirk is kind, and sometimes a little crazy, but he’s nice to her, he stays up watching movie marathons with her, makes jokes with her, helped her build a name, helped her get reacquainted with a free world. He cannot be the reason she was kept in The Cage for so long.

“Broke us all out, no, you’re talking about Gently, not Icarus, he’s not-“

“He’s the one that got away, Marzanna! Don’t you want to see him suffer like you did?”

She sets her face into a hard frown. “Nobody should hurt the way you hurt me. I don’ care what they did.”

She let’s go of her restraint and let’s her body be a vessel for the universe.

When she’s done, she picks up their guns, storing them away in her car, knowing they’ll be useful. But she has a name in her head now, delivered by the universe indirectly, and feeding her own personal vendetta. Icarus has a true name now, and she knows him.

He’s going to pay for the years he left her to rot.

~

He’s extremely surprised when his home rings for the first time ever. His first thought is that is has to be Bart, that she’s in trouble, that’s she’s calling him for help. But it’s an unknown number, and he has Bart’s number saved. It’s the only number he has saved.

“Hello?” He answers.

“Is this Dirk Gently, holistic detective?” Comes an unfamiliar voice.

“Umm, yes?”

“My name is Patrick Spring. I want to talk to you about investigating my murder.”

The proposal is so strange, and there’s a pull in his chest that tells him that this is a critical point, something he cannot allow to go uninvestigated. “Well, yes, I think you ought to go on before I can accept your case.”

As it turns out, it looks like a very interesting case, and he’s already being paid handsomely for it.

~

The man with the big gun and the tattoo on the back of his head doesn't know who Dirk Gently is, and doesn't care for the name Icarus, either, so he's better off dead. Bart’s become more fond of the machete nowadays. If they don't know who she's looking for, they're no good, and their names are on her list anyways.

If the man with the big gun and the tattoo on the back of his head doesn't know who Dirk Gently is, then neither does the smaller man sitting farther down the road, and that means he's better off dead, too.

Except that he runs when he sees her, and his name isn't on her list, which means he does know where Dirk is. Bart doesn't stop chasing him until they both run out of breath.

“You can't hide him!” She pants, dropping onto her knees, machete skittering across the gravel road. “Dirk Gently is a dead man!”

The smaller man with no tattoo and no gun coughs and holds his hands up in front of his face, like that could ever stop her. “Dirk Gently?”

“You know Dirk Gently?”

“No- not really?”

“Then, why did you run?”

“You have a machete! You killed Red!”

So, his name isn’t on her list, and he knows of Dirk Gently? Obviously he's coming with her.

~

The two men who jump out of the bushes should've known better. Didn't they know who they were dealing with?

Todd pushes him out of the way, and the Kittenshark goes flying out of his hands. So. Apparently. There's that. The younger man gets bitten in half and thrown against a tree, but the older man ducks. Kittenshark returns to its body and meows, loudly.

Todd and Dirk return to their feet and glance around for the older man. He's nowhere in sight. Todd shrugs, saying something about him having run off, maybe, and bends down to pick to the Kittenshark.

Dirk gets a feeling, an instant pull, to pick up one of the shovels out of the back of their new jeep. He knows he'll need it in a moment. He gets the feeling before he sees the man.

It's all a matter of the man aiming for Todd.

And then Dirk has plunged the shovel through the man’s chest. Somehow. Dirk is also somewhat shocked that he managed that. Todd looks horrified.

He’s covered in blood, and he looks down at what he’s done, at the man choking on his own blood, convulsing a little, before finally going silent and still. He feels sick at the stickiness of the blood drying on him, and he’s reminded of the time that he spent with Bart, living on the road.

Dirk hears words in his head, not the universe, but the awful people who hurt Bart, back at the Cage. _Monster_. It was just the inexplicable pull of the universe, just the knowledge that it is his duty to protect Todd, at all costs, just like it’s Todd’s duty to do the same for him. But would Todd understand?

“Holy fuck.” Todd says, and gets to his feet, holding the Kittenshark to his chest, and gazes down at the body of the man with mild horror and fascination on his face. “You have got to teach me how to do that.”

Dirk supposes it's better than _monster_.

~

She can't catch up to him. He's dodging her bullets. He's running too fast. Bart can't catch up to him. How is he not tired? Neither of them are as young as they used to be.

She loses him.

The universe so obviously doesn't want him dead.

If Bart could, Bart would've kicked the universe’s face in, by now.

She loses Dirk Gently, and that's sign enough for her.

~

“You!” Todd exclaims, and stumbles backwards, maybe in shock, maybe because of the electric shocks, as Bart swaggers into the room.

“You.” She repeats, with a little more confusion evident on her face and in her voice.

A man walks in behind Bart, and looks very familiar though Dirk can’t place his face. But he seems to recognise Dirk as well, as he looks down at him and says: “You?”

“Me.” Dirk agrees, nodding slowly, despite being very confused. “Wait,” he slurs, “Todd, how do you know Bart?”

Todd looks to him, almost outraged. “How do _you_ know her?”

Dirk shrugs. “Here to kill me, Marzanna? Looks like somebody beat you to it.” He coughs, when he tries to laugh. He sees her flinch at the name, and remembers how he had promised not to call her that. Well, he at least, he promised that inside his head. “I didn’t think it was like you to follow a stupid hunch.”

She raises her gun to him. “Yes, I’m here to kill you, _Icarus_.” She snarls.

Dirk furrows his brows. “Who the hell- did you just call me Icarus? What does that mean?”

“It means I know what you did so many years ago, you took it all from me, and you left me there, and they hurt me! You let them hurt me!”

“I didn’t- I don’t know what you’re talking about! Bart-“

“You let me stay in the cage! You should have known! You let me-“

“Bart! Look!” Ken says (his name is Ken, he remembers now) and she lifts her gun from him for a moment, and Dirk sighs.

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but he really doesn’t have time to think about it, he has to write a note to Zachariah Webb.

~

When all is said and done, Bart can't bring herself to pull the trigger. That’s what terrifies her. She's lived her whole life relying on the fact that she could trust the universe to tell her who to kill and to keep her safe before, during, and after.

And everything in her, everything except the pull of the universe, is telling her to kill him.

That's when she realises that if the universe will be this changeable, she won't be its toy anymore. Not like this, at least.

Bart turns her gun on the last big man with a big gun and a tattoo on the back of his head. And that's the last of it. She has no bullets left, and she's glad. That's the number of bullets she wants.

Dirk - _no_ \- Icarus is breathing raggedly. He's not worth it, anyways.

“That's it.” She announces to the silent room. “I'm done.”

And Bart strides out, without a single goodbye, Ken hot on her heels. “What do you mean ‘ _I’m done_ ’?” He asks, chasing her through the maze of the house. Somehow, she knows exactly where to walk to reach an exit.

“No more killin’ for me. I'm just gonna follow the hunches, now. If the universe wants to drag me around and make me share that _pile of shit’s_ abilities, the universe can _shove_ it and watch me pick one.” She grins to herself. “Watch me pick the _wrong_ one.”

~

He’s bleeding out, he knows the chances of him surviving this should be slim, but the pull of the universe, that ever insistent tug would raise him from six feet under if it could. As long as it remains, he knows he’ll survive anything that’s thrown at him.

And it’s still dragging him behind it, even as Todd sort of convulses on the floor. Even as he feels his own muscles clench and unclench unnaturally, unhealthily. He’s going to make it through this, and after everything that’s happened, finding friends, losing them all, ruining every good thing he has, he can’t find it in himself to care anymore.

He doesn’t want to follow the universe anymore, but he knows he has to, there are dire consequences if he doesn’t, he learned that as a child. But he can twist its intent.

He knows he isn’t meant to have what is rightfully Bart’s. He’s not supposed to have that intuition that tells him who is better off in a casket. But he has it. By some awful trick of fate, they share it.

He chooses now, as his eyesight fades, that if he pull through, which he knows he will, he’ll only listen to the bad and awful hunches. He can get used to the blood and gore. He has before, he can do it again. If he’s going to lose everyone anyway, isn’t it just sensible of him to push them away first?

If the universe wants him to run errands he will. He’s going to become it’s very own apathetic avenging angel, and there is nothing it can do to stop him.

~

They turn the corner and screech to a halt. She can practically feel the gravel skidding over her skin like she was the tires. Panic invades her body. She thought it was over, but apparently they aren't done with her, yet. They sent the goddamn fucking cavalry to collect her, this time.

(There's guns, and men in bulletproof vests that wouldn't mean shit to her if she wanted, and a tank because they seem to think that would give her any kind of pause. This time, apparently, there's no sweet man with an accent like her mother's, offering to take her away from the bodies, go get ice cream, instead, and then take her somewhere safe. They're not asking this time.)

(Bart suspects if she'd said _no_ he wouldn't have left her be, anyway.)

The tank rolls forwards and Ken is frozen. Nothing is happening. They're here for her. They're going to have to catch her, first.

“Like _hell_ I'm going back to that shithole.” She mutters and changes gears for him, leaning across the console and making the quickest U-turn of her life before pushing at his knee to press his foot down on the accelerator.

“Bart!” Ken cries, and takes back control of the car, obviously on her side but beyond confused. “What's happening?”

“I'm not gonna let them hurt you.” Bart replies, gruffly, looking over her shoulder. They're pursuing, albeit not fast enough. “And they will if we stay.”

“Where are we going?” He asks.

“Where ever the universe takes us, it won’t lead me wrong.” Ken stares at her with big, bewildered eyes.

“You’re not gonna fight them?” He demands, eyes as wide as saucers.

“Why would I do that? I don’t do that anymore, Ken. If I’m gonna be the universe’s plaything, it’s gonna be on my terms, you see.” She presses his knee, making him press down on the accelerator, making the car going faster than it ought to on a road as unkempt as this one, but she laughs, and it’s the most free she’s felt in a long, long time. And it’s feels like they’re getting away with it.

And then one of the men with the big guns shoots Ken through his middle, and he convulses, and there is blood just _everywhere_.

Bart thought she was done with the blood everywhere, but it’s so wrong, because it’s Ken’s blood. _Ken’s_ blood is everywhere. Ken’s blood is everywhere, and they are miles from the nearest hospital, and there is no way she’s going back to the militia that lays in wait for her to ask for help.

There is a dull, throbbing pain in her gut, like she can feel what Ken is feeling, and a ringing in her ears, that makes it so she can’t think beyond putting herself on his lap, to drive the car, beyond making sure her foot is on the accelerator.

She doesn’t know what she’ll do.

He has to make it. Because somehow he is hers. He’s supposed to make everything right with her, keep her from harm, and she would do the same for him in return. She’s got to keep going, make sure he has the best chance of making it.

When they are a reasonable distance from the tanks, and the men with big guns, she reaches over, and moves one of his (scarily limp) hands, and places it over the wound.

(He was shot from the back, but he’s bleeding from the front. If Bart had made this shot, she would have grinned, because it’s almost sure to kill anyone. And exit wound is a death sentence.)

Two miles from the hospital, when Ken’s breathing is getting real shallow, she realises her breathing is real big, and quick, and maybe she should do something about this, and maybe also do something about the now stabbing pain in her belly, driving through her.

So she starts talking to him, about Blackwing, about how it was just the most boring place she had ever been. And when it wasn’t boring it _hurt_. And how she never had birthdays, and how she never really went to sleep with a full belly. About weekly doctor appointments, where the doctor would tut, and shake their head, and say that she was still too small, to scrawny, too thin. Not good enough.

And she tells him about the escape, and about Dirk Gently, and how they made their names together, and how they had been friends for a time, and how it was him who left her in the cold dark place that came before, whether he knew it or not.

And she tells him about the warmth that he brought into her life, and about how she’s real glad he decided that being alive and with her was better than being dead, and how she was really glad to have him by her side, and that it must be fate, because the scientists had always said that she had to be lonesome to ensure she didn’t kill everyone. That while she was constant, she was deadly.

But he's her constant. He’s her rock. And he can’t leave now. Not now. Maybe not ever.

When they get to the hospital they take him away, and everyone is fussing over him, and no one stays with her.

She stands alone, covered in his blood wondering if he’ll make it (praying to any deity she can think of that he will.)

~

Dirk supposes there's a better way of getting rid of someone you don't like. He also supposes that the universe wouldn't have called him out of the diner, in the middle of breakfast, on a whim, for no reason.

But he's still really pissed if that he's got to kill this guy. Out on the street, in broad daylight. God knows the universe won't let him get caught, but Dirk had forgotten how nerve wracking this whole killing people business was.

Friedkin smirks as his shoulders drop.

“Not now.” He whines, wishing more than anything that his fingernails weren’t itching to dig into his flesh until blood started beading at his fingertips.

Friedkin walks towards him, and Dirk sighs, let’s all the tension out of his body, and lets himself be puppeted through the killing of this man.

He sees flashes of red, and he doesn’t know what he’s picked up to make it, but by the time he’s done, Friedkin is barely moving, just gasping, grasping for his final moments of life, and Dirk is drenched, head to toe in the man’s blood.

He drops the rusted bar (that’s what he picked up, it’s all sharp at the end like a spear) and takes several steps away from the man taking heaving breaths.

“I won’t be controlled.” He tells no one in particular - or maybe he’s talking to Friedkin - though it doesn’t much matter, as he’ll be dead soon anyways.

“Dirk?” Farah’s voice rings out, and the shame of committing this act of senseless violence overcomes him.

He falls to his knees, and very vaguely, his hands burn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. If you liked this, so far, please leave a comment and/or kudos, and let us know about what exactly you liked. The next chapter will be out as soon as we can manage it, but we hope this will do for now. You can track us down on Tumblr @nose-coffee and @cake-snake and cry at us about the season finale/anything about this fic.
> 
> Thank you, again, we hope you enjoyed this!


	2. i walk alone, i’m everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Farah and Perdita work out a few of the finer details as Todd goes back to repainting the walls that are now definitely not covered in blood that not even the strongest concoction of bleach could fully remove. So Dirk is left to watch from the window as Farah walks Miss Moore out, and watch as the woman takes about five steps, stiffens, turns in a circle, and begins walking the other way.
> 
> It’s weird. But he has done weirder, so he thinks maybe she realised she was going the wrong way, and righted her course.
> 
> The voice he is trying to learn to ignore tells him that that’s not it.
> 
> He tells it to shove off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for tuning back in to this oddball of an AU. 
> 
> Chapter title is from Running With The Wolves by AURORA.
> 
> We have created original characters for the sake of this fic, but they, as far as we are aware, bare no resemblance to any persons living or dead, and are not intentionally knock offs or rip offs of any other persons original characters. Thanks.

**15 Years Ago**

The girl scrambles to find purchase on the bricks she’s climbing. Below, she sees the monsters, men in masks, with big guns, aiming at her, and she ignores the tears streaming down her face and tries to focus on climbing the side of the building, getting out of the reach of the men.

Her arms are weakened by years of starvation and captivity, and her tiny body just won’t support itself. But she can’t show them what they want to see, what they kept asking her to do. The Ravens cannot take her back, and stuff her in a cage. She will not let them.

She reaches, pulls, let’s her bare, freezing toes settle on a ledge to push her up, and she rolls over the side of the building onto the roof and lies there for a moment, breathing hard.

She doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve this, but The Ravens are relentless and merciless, and if she is caught, she will never see the sunlight again. She will never see any kindness again.

She needs to disappear, because she knows they’re coming for her.

So she squeezes her eyes shut, concentrates, and taps her heels together for good measure. And the world stops around her.

She is truly free.

~

**Present Day**

“Farah?” Yells Dirk. There is no answer. Dirk presses a button on the coffee machine again, and, again, it makes a negative beeping noise which he knows from some of Todd’s hungover groanings means that there are no coffee beans to be making coffee with. Which is.

Great.

“Farah!” There's a thumping noise, and then the sound of thin plastic being moved and then louder, closer thumping noises. Farah rounds the corner looking quite ready to behead him. Which is. You know. Fair.

“What?” She asks through gritted teeth, off-white paint on both her boots and little bit on her face. Dirk gives her a bright smile and shows her his coffee cup.

“We’re out of coffee.” Dirk responds, as cheerfully as he can manage. He feels itchy, just under his skin, and the itch never truly leaves his mind.

Farah presses her palms together like she's begging whatever deity she believes in to give her strength and lets out a breath that sounds like it might have been a scream while inside her head. “That sounds like a _you_ problem.” She says.

Dirk frowns and leans back against the counter, putting his mug down on the countertop. “But, Farah, you're in charge of supplying necessary… _supplies_ to the agency.”

She sighs, and sags a little. “And while I would _love_ to supply you with necessary supplies such as expensive coffee that _only you_ drink, you are also the reason that we’re all here, late, on a Thursday night,” her voice breaks a little on the word _Thursday_ , as if she's about to cry, “overseeing repairs, because you decided to _behead_ our last client and I had to get the office _repainted_. Our funds are a little depleted right now, Dirk, so it would be great if you shut up and stopped complaining.”

Dirk holds his hands up, palms open, and sways on the spot, smiling in such a way that anyone would know he's actually not that happy. “Okay, my bad,” he admits, and wishes Todd were here to moderate this argument, “but throwing around the word _beheaded_ is a little strong don't you think-?”

Farah’s hands clench into fists. “You pulled an _ax_ out from under your desk - which neither of us even knew you had, by the way! - and, full-on, chopped his head off! You gave me no notice, no warning! There wasn't even a warning shot - warning chop? - there wasn't even a warning chop! Maybe go for his shoulder, let him fight back? No! You just took his head _right_ off!” Her voice rises to something shrill, but she's not backing down, and Dirk would not honestly expect her to. “I was standing _right next to him_! I thought ‘oh gee, we’ll get to actually go out for something other than ramen noodles for once, because we’ll have enough money,’ and then you _dashed_ my dreams by _straight up killing him as he walked in the door!_ ”

“The universe said he was a goner, _so he was a goner!_ ” Dirk shouts back, because he's really sick of repeating it. It happens when it happens. He doesn't get to pick and choose. The universe tells him to jump and he says _how high?_ He can't afford to be left behind to plummet.

“That's not even to mention your bail!” She continues. “Do you know how much I paid to get you out?”

“Don't pretend we’re _paupers_! You still have _two million_ from Lydia!”

“ _I'm investing in BitCoin!_ ” Farah screams, and Dirk’s readying a response when Todd steps through the plastic sheets that divide the kitchenette from the rest of the office and raises an eyebrow at them.

“Guys!” He yells, and they both turn to him. His cheeks colour. He hates interrupting people, and even more so when he then has to be the centre of attention. “We have a client.”

Dirk blinks in surprise, unable to otherwise express himself over this new development. Farah runs her face and leans against the sink. “At eleven on a Thursday night?” She groans. “They must be fucking crazy or already dead.”

Todd looks down at his phone. “She says her name is Perdita Moore and she thinks her house is haunted. Or she’s being pranked.” He sighs, shrugging. “Either way, she'd like us to help.”

“Lead the way.” Dirk says, and Farah shoves him behind her, muttering something about being the first line of defence if he decides to kill Perdita Moore.

Todd leads them out into the front room of the apartment they had repurposed, where a woman waits, hands clasped in front of her, rocking back and forth on her heels. She looks incredibly nervous.

The first thing he notices is that his hunches aren’t telling him to kill her. In fact, quite the opposite. _She must be safe. She must be unharmed._

The second is that the hunches he doesn’t listen to anymore are going haywire. He feels almost like he’s been electrocuted by an electric ghost rhino, with the adrenaline running through his veins at the prospect of the mystery surrounding the woman.

She’s nothing extraordinary, physically. Clearly undyed blonde hair, that hangs loosely to about her shoulders, and dishwater grey eyes, and a smattering of freckles. She is nothing remarkable but he knows that there is something about her that is thrilling. She brings with her a mystery he mustn’t refuse.

He almost tells her to get out out of spite.

Her face resolves it’s screwed up, nervous expression when she sees them, and she smiles, a little tightly. It’s a nice smile, nonetheless.

“Perdita, this is Dirk and Farah.” Todd announces and gestures for her to sit on a plastic wrapped seat. She gives it a particularly wary look before sitting. Dirk and Farah pull up two additional plastic wrapped chairs to the desk Perdita sits in front of, and in unpracticed unison, the three of them sit down. “Can you tell them what you told me?”

Dirk has noticed that when Todd speaks to clients he puts on a gentle voice that he once told Dirk was his Customer Service voice. Dirk wasn't willing to believe it worked until he watches Perdita visibly relax.

“So, I'm pretty sure my house is haunted. Or some people are playing an epic, long standing prank on me.”

Farah straightens up in a professional manner. “What events have lead you to believe that this is the case?”

“Well, sometimes, my TV turns on.” And then she stops talking. Dirk looks at Todd who's looking at Farah who's looking at Perdita.

“Well, yes.” Todd says, and all eyes snap to him. Further blushing on his account. “That's what happens with TV’s.”

“No, that's not, wait, I meant sometimes it turns on without me telling it to.”

Everyone leans forward. Perdita leans back a bit, looking a little intimidated.

“Well, that is…” Dirk looks to the other two for suggestions as to suitable descriptors. “... odd.”

Farah raises an eyebrow, but there's a laugh on her lips, so he's at least forgiven for yelling at her, right now. “‘Odd’? That's the word you're going with?”

“Perdita, is there anything else?” Todd says. He's obviously very tired and wants to get home.

“Well, there's this really ugly lamp that my aunt gave me, and, yes, I don't like it, but it's the last thing she ever gave me so I've gotta keep it, yeah? But sometimes I come home and it's on the curb.”

“That's…very odd.” Dirk says.

“You're a lot of help, you know?” Farah tells him, and he sticks his index and middle fingers up at her in a ‘V’ formation.

“Shut up.”

Perdita seems to ignore them, and continues speaking to Todd eagerly. “Sometimes I hear the shower going when I'm not in it. I live alone.”

“Oh.”

“Every Thursday, I find a pile of quarters on my kitchen counter.”

“Well, at least it's a nice ghost.”

“And, this is a recent development, I get home from work and I just want to eat my microwaveable dinner and watch Two Broke Girls, and there's things on my recently watched that I didn't watch! I haven't watched The Crown! I'm not even remotely interested in watching The Crown!”

“Oh, you should, it's fantastic! The second season just came out and it was incredible!” Dirk interrupts enthusiastically, leaning forward even more.

“ _Red coat._ ” Todd coughs.

“ _Yankee._ ” Dirk responds.

“Is that all, Miss Moore?” Farah asks, only just stopping herself from rolling her eyes.

“It's just Perdita. And, there is one more thing. Sometimes things aren't where I left them. And sometimes there are things and I didn't leave them there.”

“That sounds like a haunting.” Farah says confidently

“It wouldn't surprise me. My building is practically ancient. If you guys could come around and check it out, maybe tomorrow, that'd be great.”

The three look around at each other and avidly nod. “We will absolutely be there, Perdita, you have nothing to fear, we will dispel this ghost for you and you will sleep again.” Dirk says, and he can nearly hear the two of them rolling their eyes at his habit of overstating things when he gets excited.

“Does 3:30pm work for you?” Farah asks. Perdita nods.

Farah and Perdita work out a few of the finer details as Todd goes back to repainting the walls that are now definitely not covered in blood that not even the strongest concoction of bleach could fully remove. So Dirk is left to watch from the window as Farah walks Miss Moore out, and watch as the woman takes about five steps, stiffens, turns in a circle, and begins walking the other way.

It’s weird. But he has done weirder, so he thinks maybe she realised she was going the wrong way, and righted her course.

The voice he is trying to learn to ignore tells him that that’s not it.

He tells it to shove off.

~

“They're all dead!” Ken yells, hobbling out of the car and looking out at the parking lot of the quarry which is now littered with corpses. Bart frowns and opens her own door, giving the blood spattered windscreen a disdainful look.

“Yeah, that last guy would just not _die_.” She replies, glancing down at the older dude with a moustache in a white suit who they'd run over at least three times before going still.

Ken gives the whole place a conflicted look. “I thought you weren't killing people, now.”

“ _I_ didn't kill ‘em!” Bart cries, throwing her hands up and not looking at the terrified looking blonde woman who she'd had the strongest urge to kill. “The _car_ did! It's different! And after the steerin’ wheel came off I was hardly in control!”

He limps over to one of the other scattered bodies and groans in pain as he reaches down to take their pulse. Bart hurries to him, pulling him upright. She feels like crying whenever he's in pain. It's not right.

“Well, the universe obviously wanted you to kill them, anyway.” He sighs and scuffs his boot against the gravel.

She sags, biting the inside of her cheek. “I didn't wanna kill anyone. I was just followin’ a hunch. Tryna be a detective, like Dirk.” His name feels sour in her mouth, but the sentiment is there. She didn't have the bullets to kill him, then, but the next time she will.

“Well, no one’s gonna take this kind of massacre lightly.” He says and wraps an arm over her shoulder. Bart takes his hand and they stumble back to the car. They're gonna have to wash it before they leave town. At this rate, the universe will turn her into the police for having blood on her car, just to get her killing again.

“Wait.” Ken says, and Bart stops, immediately. He's staring at the guy in the white suit. Specifically his hand. There's a wooden curly stick with a purple something on the end of it in his hand, glowing faintly. She release Ken carefully and takes it from his hand.

“Eh.” She says, and snaps it over her knee. There's another stick in his pocket, with a blue something on the end, that's already snapped. “Le’s go before someone sees us.”

Ken nods and hobbles into his side of the car.

Bart sighs heavily. He's recovered well, which is surprising, considering the fact that he had almost died, but he'll never walk or run the way he used to. Bart can't help but feel guilty.

She gets in the car and they drive out of the quarry.

~

They arrive at the old two story townhouse, with its molded concrete features, and metal grating around the balcony and patio. It’s charming, sweet even. Exactly the kind of thing that you would expect to be haunted, all old Victorian architecture. Dirk feels like it would be natural to see a little shadow in the upstairs window, and thinks maybe he imagines one to fulfill that part of the aesthetic.

Farah seems to ignore the charm of the place, and walks up to the front door to knock, and finds that it drifts open as she brings her fist to the wooden door. There’s a thrilling chill to the air as it drifts, and Dirk can’t help but grin. It’s brilliantly fitting, but he pulls his face into some semblance of normalcy before Farah can berate him about proper etiquette when facing the fact that a client might have been kidnapped or murdered or something.

Todd, however, seems to be on his side. “Holy shit, this is great.” He laughs.

Farah shoots him a sharp look, and Todd looks like he’s folded his mouth up at least six times, and looks appropriately bashful. At least Dirk had the good sense not to say it out loud.

“Todd, so not cool, I think something's wrong. You two need to help me.”

“Farah!” Dirk exclaims. “You’re the one with combat experience and training!”

She smiles sweetly. “Which is why I need two little, shrimpy guys like you as bait.”

Todd huffs, and pushes Dirk ahead of him, up onto the patio. “Fine. But he’s going in first.”

Dirk starts. “Um, if I might weigh in on the subject, I think-“

Todd pushes him through the door. “And, in you go!”

The hallway is darkened, and a little creepy. Perdita was obviously aiming to match the decor to the age of the building, everything having a sort of antique feel to it, with its dark wood and brass fastenings. The cornices are molded and the ceilings are high, the walls covered in a sweet blue and white wallpaper, and everything has a sort of creaky air to it. It’s not a leap to assume a place like this might be haunted.

“The hallway is clear!” He calls, creeping forward, past the stairs and into the living room. “Perdita?”

Perdita has obviously spent a lot of money furnishing this place, and he remembers that they never asked her what she did for a living. With a living space this coordinated, he can only assume she’s an interior designer or a real estate agent.

There are no puddles of blood, no mysterious lumps on the floor or furniture, and he feels the other two come up behind him, Farah holding her gun aloft at eye height.

“That wasn’t cool.” He says, quietly.

“I know,” says Todd. “I regretted it as soon as I did it.”

“Somebody has to go upstairs.” Farah interjects.

“I would really like to stay down here.” Dirk says.

He can hear the two of them look at each other, and can almost hear the eyebrows moving thin the silent conversation they’re having. Finally, Farah sighs. “I get it, I have the gun. I’m going upstairs.”

Todd starts off towards a room that Dirk can only assume is the kitchen, as Farah slips back into the hallway toward the stairs. He follows closely behind Todd, peeking over his shoulder, not wanting to be the first in the room with yet another body of one of his clients, lest he be blamed for her death.

But nothing in the kitchen, dining room, downstairs bathroom, or laundry reveals itself to be either a dead body, or even remotely haunted, however old and prone to haunting an object might seem.

“Perdita?” Todd says, turning in a small circle in the hallway, giving the whole length of it a calculating look. There is no answer.

“It isn't possible that she forgot, is it?” Dirk asks.

“I doubt it.” Todd responds.

Farah hasn’t called out, and therefore she mustn’t have found anything either. It’s quite a useless expedition, finding no sign of their client, or any evidence of their client’s case.

Until, of course, they arrive upstairs to find Farah, and from right above their head, what sounds like a record player turns and starts playing ‘ _Dream a Little Dream of Me_ ’, Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition, if Dirk is correct. It’s chilling, the piano too perfect, her voice a little too affecting.

Todd looks up, expression quite as terrified as Dirk feels. It’s eerie, and a little incredible, because it feels immensely like living in a horror film.

“I’m not going up there.” Dirk tells him.

Todd sighs, and they locate the attic access. “I’m not going up there alone.” He says to Dirk. And Dirk, ever diligent and loyal to his assis-friend, turns in a slow circle and locates a rain stick.

“This will be good for hitting with,” he notes, tossing it from one hand to the other. Todd raises an eyebrow.

“You do realise that if it is a ghost, a stick won't do much good, right?”

Dirk shrugs. “Can't hurt.”

Todd pulls at the rope dangling from the attic access and the stairs descend. “Can't hurt the ghost,” he mutters, giving the stairs a pained look, “they'd have to be corporeal for that.”

Dirk elects to ignore this very fair point and follows Todd up the rickety stairs. The attic is dimly lit, with a skylight that is covered in decaying leaves. Todd pulls out his phone and turns on the torch. Dirk raises the rain stick, with a long rattle, as if to ward off potential surprise attacks. Clutter in opened boxes and sticking out of dressers and trunks line the walls and narrow the walkway from one end of the attic to the other.

Perdita, it appears, is a complete and utter pack rat.

“Holy shit.” Todd announces, picking up a particularly haunt-worthy doll. “I feel like I'm in _Annabelle_.”

Dirk isn't interested in Chucky’s lesser-known sister. He moves forward, rain stick hanging limply from his hand, towards a record player set up by the only other window in the whole place. “Good taste in music.” He notes, checking out the record case.

A floorboard creaks and Dirk spins around, dropping the rain stick with a loud clatter. Todd is still by the stairs. He lets his breath out slowly and hopes he hasn't done anything to anger the spirit in this house since he arrived.

“This would be a great place to hide a body.” Todd calls across the room, pulling a chain and turning on a series of ugly lamps. He's not wrong.

“But why would Perdita’s resident rent-paying spectre want to kill her?” Dirk inquires, as more of a thought rather than a question. Perdita, as plain faced and important to the universe as she was, is not the type to leave her front door open and be murdered by her ghost roommate.

“She went to someone to get rid of it?” Todd suggests, sweeping his phone torch over the still-not-well-lit attic.

“But Perdita’s lovely.” Dirk says, without really knowing where the words come from. “Surely the ghost still wouldn't want to kill her, even then.”

A hunch comes on strong and Dirk can't breathe for a second. Perdita is not in the house, and hasn't been for a while. She left the house for work yesterday morning, and then she didn't come back.

As helpful as the hunch - the information, really - that the universe just supplied him with is, Dirk vowed not to listen to them. He's a real detective now. He dusts for fingerprints and interviews people by ringing their doorbell instead of breaking into their houses through their windows.

His fingers itch to kill, the way one would itch for a cigarette. It's not a habit that Dirk thinks is very good for him. Doesn't make him itch for it any less.

The record skips and they both rush over to the player. Only to find their business card placed on the record.

Which is, well, ominous, to say the least.

“I don't think it wants us here.” Todd murmurs and picks the card up.

“No, I don't think so, either.” Dirk agrees. They turn, quickly walking from the room. Dirk takes a deep breath, suddenly finding it mildly difficult to inhale. He stops to catch his breath, wondering if he's perhaps a closet asthmatic. Todd makes a coughing, gasping noise, behind him, and Dirk whirls around, looking at him. Todd releases the card, letting it flutter to the attic floor.

There's a look of panic on his face that Dirk has become all too familiar with in the last few months.

Dirk immediately searches through his jacket for the pills he keeps in the inside pockets and unscrews the cap as quickly as he can manage, well aware that Todd is only a few moments off dissolving into the hallucination.

“Todd, Todd.” He murmurs, picking out a pill, and forcing it into Todd’s palm, and raising that hand to his mouth. Todd obediently puts it into his mouth and swallows it dry. Dirk winces. He should carry around water bottles, too, knowing that it would make everything easier.

Dirk steadies him before he can fall and focuses on helping Todd regulate his breathing, all thoughts of disgruntled spirits gone from his head.

Todd sits down on a stool after a minute or so, and puts his face in his hands. “Sorry.” He says, and it's muffled by his palms, making the apology sound a lot more like the word _worry_. Dirk knows all too well that Todd feels awful for ‘making’ Dirk take care of him while he's indisposed. Dirk has told him every time that he's not _making_ Dirk do anything at all.

“It's fine.” Dirk says to him, placing a hesitant hand on Todd’s back. “What was it, this time?”

Todd shudders and blows out one long breath before saying, “I was drowning.”

Dirk nods. “You’re safe.” He says, because he can't think of anything else to say. Except, of course, “We should go. Farah might worry.”

Todd looks down the whole way back to the stairs. Dirk aches to tell him not to be embarrassed, because he knows how this embarrasses him. But he doesn't say anything.

Dirk is the first back down the stairs, Todd immediately behind him.

Farah walks out of Perdita’s bedroom, which, from the looks of it, is just as cluttered as the attic, and gives them a confused, vaguely worried look.

Todd tugs on the rope again, and the stairs ascend back into the roof. “Nothing in the attic.” He says to her, smiling the way Todd smiles when he forgets that everyone knows his resting face is grumpy and he only smiles when he doesn't want people to worry.

One inquiring look from Farah to Dirk, and one shake of the head from Dirk to Farah simultaneously confirms her fears, and lets her know not to mention it.

“There's a song playing.” She responds, using her gun to gesture at the ceiling. Ah, yes, Dirk had forgotten about that.

“Ghost has immaculate taste in music.” Dirk says, as if in agreement, as if Farah was talking about the song and not the appearance of the noise in the otherwise silent, creaky house. “Ghost also did not want us in the attic.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I take it Perdita wasn't in the attic.”

“Not that we could see, no.” Todd interjects, shuffling away from the stairs as if something heavy will bring them down on top of him. Dirk has to give Todd’s paranoia credit where credit is due - if he were a malevolent spectre, that's exactly what he'd do to unsuspecting victims.

“So,” and at this, Farah puts her gun back in her holster, completely dropping her guard, and folding her arms across her chest, “we have both gained a case and lost our client.”

“Yes.” Dirk agrees, nodding.

“Fantastic.” She groans, and leans against a bookcase that is cluttered with what looks to be centuries old books.

“What now?” Todd asks.

“Now, we interview neighbors and we give the landlord a visit where we ask him questions on previous tenants and perhaps gruesome deaths that any of them could have suffered.” Dirk provides, confidently.

“Sounds solid, let’s go.” Farah says, and marches down the stairs, quickly, leaving Todd and Dirk to scramble after her, hastily. “This house is giving me the creeps.”

“Okay.” And if Dirk hears the attic stairs smack into the second story landing it's not like he’s obligated to say anything, is it? He's a real detective, now, and real detectives say nothing or go back and investigate. And he's not going back into Perdita’s house.

~

 _Holistic_ the card says. The dictionary by Dita’s bed tells her that it means “the interconnectedness of all things”.

She knows a little something about that.

Not that they can know that, yet, though.

She'll wait for Dita, until the time is right.

Dirk Gently and associates can have a piece of her mind when she's sure that Dita isn't coming back. They can talk about arguable efficiency, then.

~

Todd can't stop thinking about the fact that their client, the first client they'd had in a while that didn't end up dead on the office floor, went missing immediately after giving them a case to work. He's supposed to be writing up an official report on why they had spent company money on paint and other tools needed for repainting the office, but he's terribly distracted.

Perdita didn't seem the type to have anything interesting happen to her. She seemed plain and simple, and maybe she was a hoarder and lived in a creepy old house that creaked with every breath of wind, but that was a kind of strange Todd could understand.

The fact that she went missing seems wrong.

The fact that she's missing seems…sinister.

Suddenly a hand slams a small slip of paper down on his desk and he yelps in surprise, jumping in his seat. The hand is clenching at the slip of paper like it did the person wrong.

The girl who is attached to the hand looks like she's not sure what to do now.

She has a round face, and is obviously of Asian descent, though Todd can't place exactly where. Her hair is carefully braided away from her face, hanging down her back like a rope, her face open and neutral. It's her eyes that really gets him. They're dark brown, but around her pupils is a ring of pure orange. She's wearing a green and white striped three quarter sleeved top that doesn't fit her very well, and bright red leggings that don't match the shirt.

“Um,” Todd says, and swallows, nervously. “Can I help you?”

“You are Dirk Gently?” She asks, voice quivering. She has the strangest accent that he can't decipher.

“Uh, no, I'm Todd Brotzman.” He peels her finger away from the slip of paper, and finds it's their business card, bent and ripped a little. “I'm an associate, I guess you could say. Dirk Gently’s partner.”

“I am looking for someone. I have not seen her in too many days.” Her face is sincere, and Todd looks around to see if anyone is around to help him deal with this strange woman. No one is. Farah is out getting coffee, Dirk said he was going to the roof to knit, for some reason. He is alone.

“We’re currently working a case, but once we’ve wrapped it up I'm sure we can help you.” He tells her, resolving to be honest, because he is sure that Dirk would love to take this woman’s case.

“You are working my friend’s case.” The woman notes, gesturing to the notes spread out on Todd’s desk. Farah always said he needed to be more organised. “I will solve it for you. I am her disturbance. Now you will help me find Perdita Moore.” She says firmly.

“What?” He asks, incredulously. There’s way too much to be thinking about what she just said, right now.

“You need to help my find my flatmate.” She presses, further, leaning heavily on his desk, enough to make him want to lean back, away from her and at the orange in her eyes that is threatening to set him on fire. “She is gone. She left two mornings ago, and has not returned. You must help me find Dita.”

“Dita?” He splutters. And then registers it all. The case on his desk, _I am her disturbance_. “You want to find Perdita Moore. She said she lived alone!”

“Well isn’t that rude of her. I leave her rent money every Thursday.” The woman actually looks confused.

“You live in Perdita Moore’s house?” He asks. She nods solemnly.

“How? She didn’t know you did, so how do you live in her home?”

“I am very quiet. And I bend everything, so as not to disturb her. She likes her privacy, so I try not to go into the main house very often.”

“You bend everything?”

“I freeze it, and move while it’s frozen. That way, she doesn’t see me.”

“Fuck, hold on a second. What did you say your name was?”

“I don't...my name is Project Bermuda.”

Todd stares. _Project Bermuda_. That sounds way too Blackwing for him. “I'm gonna need you to stay right there. I'm going to go find Dirk Gently, and you need to help me by staying right here, okay?”

Project Bermuda nods. Todd hurries out of the office and into the stairwell. The roof is two levels up from them, which means that he has to climb four sets of stairs. Which, you know, is the fucking worst.

He sucks it up, though, and hurries up the stairs, because he maybe has a former Blackwing subject in the office, asking them to help find their former client. There's no way that Dirk won't be interested in this.

He has to dash past a young man on the phone to someone, speaking loudly, “Yes, yes, I know, the Space Needle is a must-see, mom, but I'm busy on Thursday,” and murmurs his apologies as he passes. It's not often he sees someone who lives in the building. Mostly because he never goes this far up the building, and he's only outside the office when no one else is.

The door to the roof jams a bit when he tries to open it, but then he bashes his shoulder into it enough to open it and wedges it open with a brick once he's safely out on the roof.

Dirk turns around as he hears the door squeaking, showing Todd his real reason for coming up to the roof at least three times a day, which is apparently to smoke. Dirk flushes and drops the cigarette to the ground and stubs it out with his foot.

Todd processes many things in that moment, the first being that Dirk smokes. He had no idea. The second, which he pushes to the side, is how inexplicably hot he somehow finds that. The third, occurs to him, that maybe he thinks Dirk is hot, and he pushes that to the side as well.

The fourth is that there is still a strange, possible ex-Blackwing subject in their office downstairs, and he’s busy thinking about the fact that Dirk has rolled his sleeves up instead of anything important.

He shakes it off. “Dirk. You have to come downstairs.”

“Ah Todd,” Dirk responds, feigning innocence, and yet still quite red in the face, which is- “I have been knitting-“

“Yeah, no, I won’t tell Farah, but you have to come downstairs.” Todd interrupts, and kicks the brick back across the roof, holding the door open. Dirk gives him an exasperated look, but follows Todd into the stairwell, anyway, shoving the packet of cigarettes in his back pocket.

“What's happening?” Dirk asks him, one floor down, two sets of stairs to go.

“We’ve had a major breakthrough in the haunted house case.” Todd replies, because it’s really the only thing he knows for sure, apart from Perdita Moore being actually, legitimately missing.

“Really?” Dirk exclaims, and Todd supposes he should've seen that coming, but he's way too tired to actually care.

“Yeah.” He says, as they reach the landing. “It's not haunted.”

Before Dirk can say anything else, he opens the office door and gestures for Dirk to go first. He watches Dirk register Project Bermuda and a series of confusing emotions cross his face.

“Hello.” Dirk says, cautiously. “How can I help you?”

“You are Dirk Gently?” Project Bermuda responds, evading the question, and standing up. Todd now registers the shit brown Crocs she's wearing. He couldn't be more confused by her outfit.

“I am.” Dirk shoots a look at Todd, very confused and looking for an explanation. “And who are you?”

“I am Project Bermuda.” Todd watches Dirk go rigid. “Perdita Moore is missing, and you need to find her.”

“Project Bermuda?” He repeats, voice wavering a bit.

“I don't remember a name that they did not give me.”

“Who is ‘they’? Blackwing?”

“Yes. The Ravens.”

“The _Ravens_?”

“Ravens have black wings. And every doctor they sent in to examine me had a strange, pointy nose. I thought it was funny. None of them did.”

“So you're one of the others, then. One of the universe’s tools?”

She cocks her head confusedly. “Tools? I believe that is an insult.”

Dirk shakes his head. “Does the universe ever speak to you?”

“Sometimes, but I don’t generally take myself anywhere that I might be of use to it. I do not want to draw the attention of The Ravens.”

“Very wise.” Dirk replies. “But you do have abilities outside the realm of a normal persons?”

She opens her mouth, with an expression which suggests that she’s going to dispute that fact, when Todd interrupts. “You said you froze everything before.”

“I did. I do.” She replies.

“Can you describe what that means?” Dirk inquires.

She cocks her head again. “It’s easier to show you.”

Just at that moment, as she gently takes each of their hands, Farah walks in the door with a tray of drinks. Bermuda squeezes her eyes closed, and screws up her face in concentration, and the whole world slows to a stop. Farah’s freezes in the doorway with boiling hot drinks, and leaves outside the window that had been being carried by a light breeze and still in mid-air outside of the window.

It’s incredibly beautiful, a single moment in time preserved for an indefinite amount of time, only for their eyes.

Dirk gasps. “You just do this?”

She shrugs. “Only when necessary. Like I said, I don’t want to draw the attention of The Ravens.”

Dirk rushes over to Farah and picks up his ordered drink, a peppermint hot chocolate with five marshmallows, each one paid for, and takes a sip. “If we stay in this moment for as long as it takes me to finish this drink, will it ever cool? _Ooh_! Can you only bring other people into the moment if you’re touching them? Or if you want them to be there, will that work too? How did you first find you could do it? When did you-“

“Did you want me to answer any one of those questions, or did you want to continue seeking validation by asking clever questions?”

Todd stifles a laugh. “I like her.” Dirk scowls at him.

“Just because she's making fun of me-” he begins, and Todd shakes his head.  
  
“Well, that on top of the rad universe-pausing powers.” He says, and turns to Project Bermuda. “That’s super cool.”

Even Dirk has to admit it. It is super cool.

“If we stay in this moment, your drink will eventually cool, because you pulled it out of the freeze and into this pocket dimension. There is no way of putting it back into the frozen dimension, I have tried many times.” At this, Project Bermuda sighs, and it's long and there's an underlying tone to it, as if she's remembering something painful. Her face betrays absolutely nothing. “It is only if I am touching another person that I can bring them into a frozen moment, and I have only done it once before. I do not remember the first time I did it, but I must have been very young, because my first memories are with The Ravens.”

“How hard is it to unfreeze everything?” Dirk asks, taking another sip of his boiling hot hot chocolate.

Project Bermuda smiles. “Like breathing.” She snaps her fingers, and Farah walks right into Dirk.

They both drop the drinks and Farah lets out a yelp of surprise and then pain as coffee splatters on her pant legs. Bermuda laughs. Todd stares. Dirk is making a whiny noise about dropping his hot chocolate, and the fact that it's now all over his shoes and the floor instead of inside his cup.

“What the hell just happened?” Farah exclaims, loud enough that she may as well be screaming. “You were all over there, and then suddenly Dirk is over here, and he has the hot chocolate, and oh my god, my leg is _burning_ \- what the hell happened, Todd? Who is this? What is happening!”

Dirk rushes into the kitchen to get a wet towel to soothe her leg as Todd guides her to a seat.

“So, weird shit is happening, but on the bright side, we found the source of our haunting.”

Bermuda waves, and Todd cringes a little. Farah looks between Bermuda and him. “You’re going to need to elaborate.” Dirk arrives back with the towel, and starts mopping up the now cold coffee. His face is appropriately apologetic, however does not seem in the mood to explain. “Somebody, tell me what’s going on, or so help me, God-“

“I am Project Bermuda.” Bermuda says. Farah settles her eyes suspiciously on her.

“Is she-“

“She does seem to be ex-Blackwing.” Todd cuts her off.

“And she - what? Killed Perdita?” Farah drawls, and then makes a pained sound, shaking her leg.

Project Bermuda - and they really need to give her a new name, because calling her that seems deeply wrong - looks horrified at this comment. “No! I would never harm Dita! I am here to ask for assistance in locating her!” She sags, and even Farah seems to soften towards her, recognising the hopelessness who und through her voice. “I feel lonely without her, like someone has taken a knife to my chest and ripped out something important, and I got the strangest feeling that you could help me.”

Dirk looks to Todd who then, in turn, looks to Farah, who bites her lip.

“Of course we’ll help you.” Todd says, voice cracking a bit. Farah nods, and Dirk says nothing.

Bermuda throws herself into his arms. “Thank you! I will give you a large sum of money once Dita is found!”

Todd pats her back in a way he hopes is comforting, and is struck, suddenly by how long her hair is. If he thinks back, it must be hanging to mid thigh, and if he thinks even harder about it, it’s moved almost ethereally while she had the world frozen. Like she had been floating just under the surface of a body of water.

She pulls back from the hug, and turns around in order to hug Farah, nearly hitting him in the face with her strangely long hair.

He steps back, and finds himself level with Dirk. Dirk leans in close to Todd’s ear as Farah stiffly receives the hug. “We haven’t even told her about Bermuda’s power.”

Todd shrugs. “Let’s not reduce her down to that. She’s a low level time bender, with terrible fashion sense, and a bad radar for personal space.”

Dirk stifles a laugh. “Yes that is a fairly good assessment. Might I add, cheerful even in dire circumstances. She really is quite admirable.”

Todd nods in agreement. There's not really much else he can do.

~

Panto, the guy they'd hit with their car after driving out of the quarry, did not die immediately after being hit. Bart’s actually kind of glad, especially because he was looking for Dirk.

(“Watcha doin’ here, buddy? You lose your car? I've done that. I've lost more cars than you can-”

“Bart.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“I'm looking for someone.”

“You're in the right place. I'm real good at findin’ people. Who're you lookin’ for?”

“A man called Dirk Gently.”)

She told him he'd have to settle for her, and then she had him give her directions to where he came from. And then she and Panto and Ken huddled together on a bed in the creepy old house and flung through a portal to a magical land.

That just about sums up her day, actually.

~

None of them really know where to start looking, or how to actually start at all. Perdita had disappeared quite completely, and Dirk’s only real clue (He is steadfastly ignoring the pull in his soul, the pull that will take him someplace unknown, where only hurt and death could lie) is that she changed direction only a few moments after stepping out of the agency. Having now visited her home, he knows that, especially on that cold night, she would not have chosen any of the routes from that direction. They take far too long.

So he takes them in the direction she left the agency that night, each of them peeling off into any alleyway that looks dangerous, or glancing around for some sort of sign that Perdita ever passed through, at all. Dirk hates how appealing the hunches look, right now.

(He vowed not to touch them, he made an oath to ignore them with all his might, but it seems that the universe will deny him until he gives in, just the way he always did, just the way it expects him to. Dirk supposes the universe isn't used to being defied.)

Todd assures him, with every disappointing, fruitless return to the office in the evening, that they'll find her. Todd is trying to be optimistic for him, which sucks, because Dirk is well aware of exactly how much of Todd is made up of pessimism. Dirk doesn't find anything - her boss is a useless man with a face like the inside of a butternut squash who has absolutely no patience and doesn't seem all that's worried that Perdita hasn't shown up to work for three days in a row - and he stresses - her landlady asks if Perdita is ever planning to pay rent, and calls them ‘nice young men’, and doesn't seem to know her tenant at all, and so is absolutely no help, either - and he finds himself smoking on the roof a lot more often than he used to.

Bermuda sleeps on the nice red couch in the office, because she doesn't want to go back to Perdita’s empty house. Bermuda follows them to their questionings, and hangs around Farah when Farah’s making hot drinks for them, because she's the only one of them who knows how to make the coffee machine make hot chocolate. Bermuda follows Dirk up to the roof, and, after deciding for herself that cigarettes taste like death, sings to herself, softly, staring out at the street lamps, below.

It's five days gone, and the sun is only just setting, and Dirk is on his second cigarette of the day, and they've gotten nowhere at all. At this point he's just about ready to give into the hunches.

Something strikes him as Bermuda begins to hum _Puff the Magic Dragon_.

“Why do you care?” He asks, exhaling smoke. Bermuda stares at him with her disconcerting orange eyes.

“Care about what?” She replies, and runs a hand through her straight hair, free from her braid, for once.

“Perdita.” Dirk clarifies, and taps the cigarette with his thumb. “She's only the owner of the house you live in. When she came to us, she'd never met you. So why do you care?”

Bermuda tips her head to the side and continues to run her hands through her long, black hair, as if getting rid of nonexistent tangles. “There is a feeling in my gut, when she is near me, that makes me feel like I am starving. When she is hurt, I feel that same hurt.” Dirk narrows his eyes. _I feel that same hurt._ He thinks, almost immediately, of how they only just avoided a pararibulitis attack in Perdita’s attic, because Dirk caught it, already feeling the way Todd was gasping for breath, as if he were drowning. “I worry for her, despite not knowing her as well as I would like to.”

Dirk feels a hunch coming on and pushes it right away.

She peers at him, as she goes about braiding it back from her face, again. “You want to say something.” She notes.

He sighs. He can't help but want to talk to her. He can't help but want to tell her everything - every fear, every dream, every feeling that tells him to just _go for it already_ \- and he sees no reason not to.

“I think,” Dirk allows, slowly, “that I know how you feel.”

Bermuda looks delighted. “You do?”

“Do you think you might love her, if you knew her better?”

“I might. But I'm not sure I know her well enough to yet make a decision like that. Who do you feel this way for?”

“You know Todd, right?”

She cocks her head to the side, and he is reminded of a small child every time she does that. “The small angry man?”

He smiles. “Yes, Todd.”

“You love him?”

“I think I could.”

She stops for a moment, and silence hangs in the air as she considers her response to that.

“He might be less angry if you got it together and kissed him.”

Dirk tries not to cough on the tobacco smoke he had been getting ready to exhale, and fails. He takes comfort in the fact that he doesn’t hack up a lung.

~

Finding Dirk’s assistant’s sister is a fluke, especially considering that Bart and Ken and Panto did not mean to end up at a witches camp. Finding Project Incubus there, as well, is also a fluke.

(“We got pulled out of our cell at Blackwing through a pond.” The one with the whitish hair says.

“Drummer and I fell through a bathtub after the dude at the motel got angry at us.” Says the shortest of Project Incubus.)

Dirk’s assistant’s sister, as it happens, is some kind of witch, and that's helpful when Bart figures out exactly who everyone in this fairytale land is hoping will show up.

It's particularly helpful when she figures out he's in Blackwing, and, besides escaping it many years ago, doesn't know where that is. So with help from Dirk’s assistant’s sister - whose name is alternatingly “Amanda”, “Boss”, and “Drummer” - Bart, three quarters of Project Incubus, and Panto hop through a pond to go and fetch Project Moloch and trigger the Happily Ever After.

(The white haired one decides to stay behind with “Drummer” for “moral support”, which sounds like bullshit to Bart up until “Drummer” puts her hands in the water and begins screaming in agony.)

Hopefully with as little blood as possible.

~

It has been six days of utter nothingness, trying to find Perdita Moore, and everyone at the agency has just about lost their minds trying to think of where she might have been taken to, or might have gone. Dirk, himself, has gone about asking children on the street where in Seattle they might go if they were here for the first time.

Most simply shouted ‘ _stranger danger_ ’ or kicked him. But some suggested the local playground, the waterfront, or the Space Needle. This practice, however, has lead to him speaking with law enforcement far too much in the past week, and Todd has encouraged him to stop.

So they’re stuck sitting at desks in the agency, Farah seemingly trying to fit as many pencils as possible into her hair, Todd seemingly asleep on the two seater sofa, Dirk itching for a cigarette and fielding phone calls, and Bermuda crouched on the windowsill, her forehead pressed to the glass, avidly watching the people below.

It’s far too quiet, and everything in Dirk feels like it’s going to recover if he doesn’t smoke or follow a damned hunch soon.

But weirdly enough, it’s not Dirk who explodes in a rage. Todd all of a sudden throws his arms off of his face. “I can’t do this any longer! We’re going out! C’mon, get your coats.”

He marches around, pulling a jacket on, and getting Bermuda’s stand in, loan jacket, which actually belongs to Amanda. She doesn’t seem to miss it, seeing as she hasn’t called in the past few months to get it back. Farah shakes the pencils out of her hair, revealing at least ten, as they clatter to the floor, and Dirk nearly falls, rolling over them to get his jacket.

“Where do you think you’re taking us?” Farah asks.

“Just out. To get coffee or whatever, I’m done sitting around, nothing ever gets done when you’re just sitting around!” Todd replies. “That is not how we solved the Spring case!”

“To be fair, Dirk was taking requests from the universe on the Spring case.” Farah murmurs pulling on her coat, and walking out the door, ushered by Todd.

“You make me sound like a university DJ.” Dirk says, trying not to sound as offended as he truly feels, which is a lot more than you'd expect from someone implying you're like a crappy university DJ. “I don't take requests anymore.”

“Which is why we haven't found Perdita, yet.” Todd mutters.

“Would you like me to tell you that the universe has secretly given me a giant clue that I have conveniently neglected to mention?” Dirk demands, and sees the frustration he's feeling on Todd’s face. “It's not like there's a giant arrow pointing to where Perdita is. She could be at the bottom of a lake, for all I know.”

“Would it really be so bad to have a hunch, again?”

“I'm not going to answer that question.” He crosses his arms over his chest indignantly, and sees Todd, left of him look down to have a little giggle. Probably because Dirk reminds him of some petulant child. At this point, the universe is making him feel like one for not doing its bidding.

“Perdita just vanished off the face of the earth. For what reason?” Farah quizzes, or maybe she’s simply wondering out loud. Either way, it feels like Dirk has been implored to answer. Lucky for him, Todd interjects.

“The universe wants Dirk to be a proper Holistic Detective, again?”

“Don't be absurd.” He scoffs. “Being a regular detective is just as fun.”

“Maybe she was just straight up kidnapped. Why have we ruled that out?” Todd asks, turning to looks at him.

“Who said we ruled that out?” Dirk cocks his head to the side, genuinely confused. He doesn’t remember fully ruling out the possibility of this woman with a reasonably paying office job at a legal firm where no one misses her, and a lovely house, with a landlady that doesn’t seem to have any care for her tenants well being, and seemingly no family to speak of, being kidnapped.

Though he can’t imagine why anyone who wasn’t strangely and criminally obsessed with her would kidnap her.

“I dunno, it just seemed like we were leaning a lot more to the Holistic side of things.” Todd shrugs, and Farah nods sagely.

“I think we were all thinking it was a Holistic thing instead of just your average, everyday kidnapping.” Farah agrees. Bermuda stays silent, strolling in front of all of them in Amanda’s jacket.

That is, until a young woman walks directly into Bermuda and sends them both crashing onto the sidewalk.

Bermuda lies sprawled on the cement for a moment, maybe in shock, maybe wondering how it was that she didn’t avoid this collision with her superhuman skills. The woman, on the other hand, ended up on hands and knees, undoubtedly skinning both, and proceeded to leap up as though possessed.

“I’m so sorry!” She just about shouts in a southern drawl, and reaches out to help Bermuda to her feet. She doesn’t seem to have come to her senses enough to realise, and so Todd steps forward to redirect the woman’s attention while Farah and Dirk rush forward to get Bermuda upright.

“Sorry, she’s a little bit vague. She does get a little bit like that sometimes, are you okay?” He asks.

The girl smiles, a little flirtatiously, and Todd shies away a little. “I’m just fine, how about you?”

“Yep, okay, you looked like you were going somewhere quite urgently.”

“Oh, Yes, do you happen to know where the Space Needle is?”

Todd looks up, pointedly, to where it towers over the city. “I’d say to go that way.”

She grins, a little off kilter, making her tight blonde curls shake. She looks downright ditzy. “Thanks. Did you want to accompany me?” At this, she seems to decide the appropriate action is to grab him by the lapels of his jacket and pull at them.

He smiles tightly, and sees Dirk look at him quizzically over her shoulder. “No, sorry, I’m on the job.”

The blonde quirks the corner of her mother and releases his jacket in favour of running her hands down his chest. “Maybe next time, then.”

“No, probably not, sorry, you seem lovely, but I do think you should get where you’re going.” Todd says, in a hurry, looking forward to having personal space again.

She gives a slightly disappointed look, waves silently, and walks on. Todd sighs.

“Well that was odd.” Dirk says.

“Yeah, she was really weird, honestly.” Todd says.

“Who forgets where they’re going, like she just did?” Dirk asks.

Todd shrugs. “You okay, Bermuda?”

She nods. But he sees her palms, dripping with blood and dirty rainwater. He shakes his head and takes of his scarf to wrap her hands in. She nods in thanks.

“She was a little… southern belle, wasn’t she?” Farah asks.

“If you mean forgetful and flirty, then yes.” Dirk comments. “I’m more worried about the fact that she asked where the Space Needle is, when it is very obvious from where we are. It’s very odd indeed. Did anyone check if she had a concussion?”

Everybody shakes their heads.

“Strange.” Dirk shrugs, “Anyway, we need drinks, let’s go.”

Farah links her and Todd's arms and they begin walking down the street again.

“It's so strange,” Dirk continues as they step into their local coffee shop, all shivering with relief at the warmth the place provides, even after their shit stint in the cold. “But even after I arrived in town, it was just like a normal place, and then suddenly all anyone ever talks about it the Space Needle.”

Farah rolls her eyes and somehow communicates, without saying, _on another rant_ to Todd wiggles his eyebrows an appropriate amount before turning to the tired looking barista behind the counter and beginning to recite their usual order, plus an extra hot chocolate for Bermuda.

“Over and over,” Dirk continues, in the background, on a roll, it seems, “the Space Needle this, the Space Needle that. It's not that great, I assure you, I've been there and-”

He suddenly cuts off as Todd goes searching through his jacket pockets and jean pockets for his wallet.

“What is it?” Farah asks, and Dirk makes a weird noise. Todd elects to ignore it, instead focusing on the fact that his wallet has entirely vanished off of his person.

“Guys, I think that girl on the street stole my wallet.” He says, just as Dirk gasps, loudly, and says, “Perdita’s at the Space Needle!”

They all pause. Todd stares at Dirk. Dirk stares at Todd.

“You first.” Dirk says.

“No, you seem to be saying something important.”

“I think the universe is trying to tell me that Perdita’s at the Space Needle. It's a hunch. Now you.”

“Southern Belle, out in the street, stole my wallet.”

“So that gives us two reasons to go to the Space Needle right now.”

“Any objections?”

Bermuda raises a bloody, scraped hand and Todd winces. “I am afraid of heights. And I want a hot chocolate. Preferably with several marshmallows.”

Farah sighs, handing her a napkin. “Well, if Dirk’s right, you might just have to push through that fear. We promised to find your friend, but you kinda need to meet us halfway. And we will get you your hot chocolate, you just need to wait a moment.”

“Farah, I don't have my wallet.” Todd says as she walks up to stand beside him at the counter.

“Aren't you lucky that I do?” She responds, pulling her wallet out of her back pocket. Todd grins.

~

They take a cab to the Space Needle. It's faster than walking. Dirk nervously bounces in his seat the entire time. Farah pays the fare as they hop out. Bermuda sips on her hot chocolate, quietly, and clutches Todd's hand in what looks to be a painfully strong grip.

“That does not look safe.” Bermuda notes, looking straight up at the Space Needle, looming over them.

“Well, it's structurally sound, considering it's been standing for 55 years, so I think you're pretty safe on that front.” Todd replies, and glances, quickly, at Farah and Dirk, before tugging Bermuda, gently, towards the doors.

“It closes in two hours, so we’re going to have to make this quick and subtle.” Farah says, softly, as they enter, each gazing around the foyer. “Todd, you are paying me back for all of this.”

“Gee, thanks, Farah.” Todd mutters. They all stay silent as Farah pays their admission.

This is the exact moment that the foyer doors burst open and a red headed blur runs towards the receptionist, welding the metal umbrella stand from beside the foyer doors, a tired and familiar looking man right behind her.

Bart catches sight of them almost immediately after raising the umbrella stand over her head, frightening the living daylights out of the receptionist.

“Dirk Gently, you are a dead man!” She shouts, and Dirk blanches.

“Run!” He says in a weak voice, and pulls Bermuda towards the elevator, leaving Farah and Todd to run after them. Once inside the elevator, they see Bart running for them, the tired man trailing behind, with a face that seems to say that this is the same shit as always. Todd reaches for the ‘close doors’ button on the console.

It almost seems like it works, until an umbrella stand toting hand enters the elevator, and the doors open automatically. She glares at them for a split second, and Dirk is reminded, inexplicably, of _Loony Toon_ cartoons, where a character becomes stuck in mid air, about to plummet into the chasm below, but given just enough comedic time to look down and then back up at the audience. Dirk assumes that he looks like that cartoon character.

Then Bart gives a feral yell and launches herself at him, apparently choosing to use the umbrella stand to bludgeon him to death. He dodges, and move to the side, so only his head is hit with one of the legs.

The doors close on the six of them, the tired looking man, who Dirk now remembers is named Ken, having followed Bart into the elevator, but making absolutely no move to stop her rampage in the confines of the vehicle.

The elevator gives a lurch and begins to ascend, but Bart is not backing down. Todd and Bermuda gather in a horrified corner, Bermuda seemingly having dropped her hot chocolate, and Ken is being held at the collar by Farah. Bart makes a similar move, dropping her umbrella stand and instead going in for her hands around his throat.

Dirk isn't quite sure who the universe thinks it's kidding, making them end up in the same place, at the same time, especially in the middle of a case, and especially while Bart is still angry at him.

“Bart! Please!” Dirk cries, attempting to pry her fingers from his throat, the fingers currently clawing at his windpipe. “Can't we be civilised?”

“No!” She cries. “You left me there in the dark, alone and weak, and now you have to do your time too, even if it’s not there!”

Her hands tighten, and he feels the universe urge him on, to get to his own defense.

He punches her, and it hurts like hell. He thinks he’s actually split a knuckle. She goes sprawling into the elevator door, and he scrambles to his feet, ready to push her away again.

They’re not yet at the top, but they’re fast approaching the last floor of the tower before the stairs start, and Dirk feels ready to make a break for it. Bart will kill him if she gets the chance, he knows it, and he doesn’t want he to. He needs to get to the Sun Deck. He can feel it.

He meets Todd’s eyes over Bart’s hulking figure, regaining her balance, and hopes he can convey through panicked eyes just how fast he and Bermuda have to run to get out of reach of Bart.

The elevator door dings open and Todd immediately tugs Bermuda out, followed closely by Dirk, already dreading the few flights up. Despite all his bragging at being a proper detective now, he's not all that good at running, and never has been, and that's a huge problem at the moment.

Luckily, he has Bermuda.

“Shit, could you, um, do your freez-y thing, right now. It would be very helpful.”

Her eye light up, and she grasps their hands and squeezes her eyes closed tightly, leaving them to tug her up the stairs while time remains in motion. And then everything freezes.

Dirk gives a sigh of relief, slips on a stair, and pulls her down with him, and everything unfreezes.

“Shit!” He cries and Todd glances back, panicking, his expression turning despairing. He keeps running. Good.

Dirk pushes himself to his feet, and scoops up the disoriented Bermuda. “I am _so_ sorry.” If he had been dreading the run up the stairs before, he should have been counting his blessings, because Bermuda is just about a dead weight at this point.

He, on the second set of stairs, hoists her up, over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and she hangs there limply, her hands brushing at his ankles. He’s stuck between worrying that she’s actually unconscious, or worrying if this is a survival tactic she developed at Blackwing.

All the same, the fireman’s carry works wonders, and he takes stairs two at a time, racing ahead of Todd, wondering what, if anything, is waiting for him to discover it on the Sun Deck. There's a loud crash and Dirk dares to glance down through the stairs, to see Farah lying on the ground, looking like she's in a lot of pain, but about to get up and chase after Ken and Bart. There's blood on her head.

“Farah!” Todd cries, but Dirk sees Bart gaining on them and tugs on Todd’s arm.

“Don't make me carry you, too.” He says, something turning over in his stomach. He can't let Todd get hurt.

They burst through the door to the dining room with great clumsiness and everyone present in that room stares. Dirk supposes they have every reason to. Of course, the moment they pause, Bart is upon them, tackling Dirk with a loud yell, and Bermuda is scrambling out of his grasp to get to Todd.

He lets go of her waist, and she hits the ground running, nearly colliding with him on her way getting to Todd, who she seems somehow more open with. He yanks a tray out of a close waiters hands and swings it at her, stumbling backwards through tables and all sorts of people, hoping desperately that he can just make it outside.

Everything will be better if he can just get outside.

People start getting out of the way, pushing each other back. Dirk’s glad. He manages to strike Bart with the tray, surprising her, and he takes the time to look around for a door to the Sun Deck. That's when he sees her.

Perdita is standing right at the edge of the balcony, looking out over the city, nonchalantly. Bermuda gasps. Bart punches Dirk in the stomach, and someone screams. He stumbles, grabbing onto Todd, and flailing in what he hopes is a dangerous looking manner as he proceeds towards the nearest door to the Sun Deck.

Dirk releases Todd as he reaches the door, instead grabbing onto Bermuda. “Can you, do the thing-?”

“I hit my head. I feel fuzzy.” She responds, vaguely, and he sighs, shoving her over the threshold. Perdita turns as they stumble out onto the chilly balcony.

Bermuda reaches for her as Bart makes it out onto the balcony, as well.

Perdita snaps her fingers, and everything freezes. Well. Not everything. Not them. But everyone inside the dining area, including Todd, and everyone else out on the balcony.

Birds are paused in flight around them, and the noise of traffic below ceases. The breeze they had had before was gone, though Perdita’s hair still moves as though caught in the wind.

There’s something unnatural, almost ethereal about her now. She stands like she holds the power connected to everything in her hands. And in her eyes lies a familiar light, that inspires the same feeling in him as when he gets a hunch.

Dirk realises, softly, quietly, _gently_ , that whoever is standing in front of him may well hold the appearance of Perdita Moore, but they are not Perdita Moore.

Bart does not continue to attack him. She stares at Perdita. He knows she has realised, the same as him, that they - whoever is inhabiting Perdita’s body - hold so many of those long coveted answers.

“Dirk Gently. Bart Curlish. Nari Dahn. I’ve been waiting-“ Brt reaches out, still transfixed by the woman in front of them, and grasps a handful of Dirk’s hair, wrenching it backwards. He shrieks.

“Hey!” Perdita cries. Bart goes taught. “What, are you serious, right now? I've been waiting for you all for a week, and when you finally get here you fight like children? I thought you were beyond that, by now.”

“Sorry,” Dirk replies, inching away from Bart, recovering as fast as he can. “But who are you? You're quite obviously not Perdita Moore. And also, who is Nari Dahn?”

The woman’s shoulders fall a little. “She doesn’t remember the original name, but that was it. You go by Project Bermuda now, correct?” She fixed her sight on Bermuda, who nods cautiously.

“You are not Dita.” Bermuda says, taking a slight step back.

Perdita’s hand lifts and her index finger taps against her temple. “She's safe in here.” Then her expression turns melancholy. “It’s quite sad that none of you remember your first given name, but at least you two sought a new one, that’s why I gave them to you.”

“‘ _Gave them to us_ ’? Who do you think you are, lady?” Bart asks.

“Well, that’s quite a hard question to answer, but I suppose the easiest way to put it is that I’m the physical manifestation in the universe, I mean apart from the obvious physical manifestation of the universe.” She taps her foot as proof of concept, drawing their attention to the frozen world around them, and the worlds beyond it. “Really, I’m the backstage portion of the universe, the one pulling the strings, making sure everything happens as it should. You’re a part of that. All three of you.”

Dirk furrows his brows, and she seems moved to explain. “I’m not very good at my job, there’s too much for one entity to handle. I try and keep a grip, and suddenly people are rioting in Greece, and Russia is out of control. Not that any of you can fix all of that. But you can fix the small things. But, like I said, I’m not very good at my job. I messed up with you two. You,” she nods to Bart, “were supposed to take care of the evil doers in the world, and go after those who cheated death without moral on their side. You,” She nods to Dirk, “were supposed to find things and people who were broken, or missing things, and fix that. Fix all the small problems.

“But nothing ever turns out the way it's supposed to. I saw what he would do, that man who came to get you, the man who killed your mother, Dirk. I saw where he would take you, and how you would fare. And it wasn't right, and I made the worst decision I could have, and I split your abilities and made you share, to keep you safe.” The universe shakes their head, Perdita’s blonde hair flying out from her face. “I shouldn't have done it. I disregarded you, Bart, I thought you'd both be able to cope with the sudden change. I overestimated you both. And I wish I had fixed that mistake earlier.”

“You _meant_ to do that?” Dirk questions.

“I wanted to keep you safe.” The universe insists. “He had already hurt enough of my children, already taken too many from their homes without my interference. I couldn't bear to watch him do it again. Which is why you killed him. Bart wasn't there, I had to improvise, and improvise fast. I never switched you back, because you were suddenly in need of protection when protection was too far away for you to reach. I'm sorry.”

She does look genuinely sorry, a little defeated even. He almost feels pity for her. But she could have changed it back at any time. She had the reigns, the controls, and she had left him so hopeless. He thinks this anger must be what Bart feels toward him.

“So you left us this way?” And Dirk feels tears welling in his eyes. He didn't want to remember killing Osmund Priest in his childhood bedroom. And now the memories were being forced on him. “Even when she was free. And I was with her. You left us confused, and only half of what we should be.”

“I’m so sorry.” The universe says, and Dirk feels a breeze of cold air where there should not be one. It makes him shiver.

“Sorry ain't good enough.” Bart replies, gruffly, but instead of anger, there is sadness set deep into her features and her tone.

“Sorry doesn't give me my balance back.” He says, and he and Bart meet eyes, seemingly at an understanding for the first time in years.

“I know, and believe me when I say that I will spend the rest of my existence trying to make up for it. I never should have let you stay that way. I was just never sure when the other shoe was going to drop and you'd need each other's abilities when the other wasn't there.” The universe bows its head. “I only truly realised my mistake when you chose to keep the others ability and shun your own.”

Dirk turns to look at Bart as she does the same to him, staring, wide eyed. “You've been killin’?” She asks.

He nods. “You've been following hunches?”

She nods back. They turn to Perdita, who looks less melancholy now. “It's why I made you this case. I knew you, Dirk, would never be able to resist, even if you were ignoring hunches, now, and I knew you, Bart, would follow them here. Picking up Nari was a bonus. Three birds with one stone.”

“Is it not two birds with one stone?” Bermuda cuts in. Perdita’s face grows warmer.

“Hush, my dear.” She says, softly, and Bermuda stares. “I'm here to set things right, although you did both keep me waiting. I thought this case was quite obvious.”

Dirk huffs, “One, permission to be offended?”

The universe raises its eyebrows. “...granted.” It allows.

“Thank you.” Dirk has the overwhelming feeling to bow, but dismisses it. “Two, set things right?”

“No more split abilities.” The universe clarifies. “You get the one you were born with and nothing else.”

“Really?” Bart asks, and it's the happiest she's sounded in years.

“Really.” The universe agrees, and turns her eyes on Dirk. Though they are still Perdita’s dishwater grey eyes, they suddenly hold a power in them, holding his attention so raptly that Dirk feels inclined to never look away. “Unless you want to stay this way.”

And Dirk thinks about it. What that would entail.

Being a detective while only using Bart’s ability these past months has been hard, and he’ll bet that Bart has had a hard time denying her urges to kill. Dirk knows they'll both have an easier time if things are the way they should have been. But part of him doesn't want to let their connection go. He doesn't want to lose the bond he and Bart forged before they'd even met, before they knew who each other were.

He knows he has to give up the list, and the twitch in his fingers for a weapon when he spots a target. He has to let Bart go, and take back the hunches.

Dirk finally looks away from the universe's eyes and turns to Bart. She is staring at her shoes, looking lost, looking contemplative. She's thinking it over, same as him. He wonders what would happen if she said no. He wonders what would happen if things stayed the same. He doesn't know why he ever thought he could live properly and happily without the hunches.

Bart meets his eyes, and he sees the girl he rescued from Blackwing, he sees the girl desperate to get rid of the clues and the hunches and the thoughts in her head that weren't her own. He sees all this and he knows she's made up her mind the same she did when he met her.

He's glad they finally came to an agreement.

They don't have to say a word. The universe knows.

She steps forward and gives them both a warm smile. She takes on of each of their hands in her own, and Dirk feels the entire flow of the universe, every possible connection, every event flowing into the next, like dominoes that were set up a Millenia ago. It’s brilliant, and beautiful, and terrifying, and overwhelming, and some part of him wants to cry, and the other wants to laugh hysterically. He finds he is doing both.

He is aware of a transfer of energy, the feeling of something being taken from him, something that never quite belonged to him, and then the warm feeling of something he lost many years ago being returned to him.

In front of him, Perdita sighs happily, looks like the last piece of a puzzle was put into place, and that all is now right in the world. She squeezes their hands, and let’s go, and all of a sudden the warmth, and the flow, and the beauty is muted, left in the background, buzzing around his brain, not in his veins anymore. He realises Perdita, the Universe, has let go of his hand.

He feels complete in himself again.

He exhales a breath he didn’t know he was holding. And then both he and Bart’s knees buckle and they tumble to the ground. Bermuda is by his side in seconds, turning him onto his back and surveying his face and hands for injuries.

“What have you done to my friend and our murderous companion?” She asks, helping Dirk to sit up.

“What he wanted me to do.” The universe replies, shrugging. “I think my work here is done, for now. So you’ll all be seeing me whenever something disastrous happens.”

“So every other Tuesday, then?” Dirk groans, a headache coming on, fast. Too much happening all at once.

“Sure, Dirk.” The universe laughs. Bermuda pats him on the shoulder and then helps Bart, tentatively, upright, once more. “Alright. Stay close to your Keepers, stay safe. Bu-bye, now.”

Dirk frowns. “Wait! Keepers? What does that mean?”

Perdita - the Universe - tilts her head to the side a little bit, obviously confused. “Have you not… the keepers. Did I not explain that to you already?”

“I think you got a little sidetracked by us bein’ angry at you.” Bart supplies.

“Oh, well. Yes, the Keepers.” She blushes. “Another little safeguard I put in place. Like I said, I don’t ever want you alone, or unhappy, or unsafe, and so, I made sure each of you have someone out there who will keep you happy, and safe, and… well, so far the system is working. I mean, every one of you has met your keeper.”

Bart looks down, and Dirk thinks he hears her murmur ‘Ken’, but he can’t be sure. He stuck on the thought that either Farah or Todd are his keeper, and that one of them was made, and formed, and placed on this earth at the same time as him in order to protect him. And they don’t know it.

They don’t know what selfish purpose they serve.

And then, on the other hand-

Bermuda raises her hand like a little girl in a classroom. The universe raises an eyebrow at her. “Yes, Nari?”

“I do not know anybody.” She responds, and her words are more calculated and measured than usual. She seems really, genuinely worried. “How can I have met my keeper?”

A soft smile forms on Perdita's lips, a smile that while seems natural also seems wrong to be on Perdita's face. “Isn't it clear? You've been living with her for months, you came to rescue her. Those strong emotions, those feelings, in here?” She taps her stomach. “That's me urging you to find her. You all feel the extreme emotions your Keeper does. It makes you more invested in their preservation, it draws you to them.”

Dirk finds himself thinking of the day, in the alley, when he'd killed Friedkin. How his hands had burned for no reason, and how they'd found Todd on the bathroom floor, screaming about his hands burning away to ash. He thinks of how he always feels Todd’s attacks coming on, sometimes even before Todd does. He thinks of the surges of fondness and annoyance and something what might well be love when he does something insane, or, on the off occasion, on a quiet night at the office.

It _is_ clear. He can see it, bright as day, fresh as a cool breeze on the roof.

It feels less selfish, now. It feels less like he's Todd's burden and more like Todd’s…he hesitates to say “soulmate” but that's really the only word for it. There are no hunches to tell him what exactly to do with this revelation.

Perdita smiles at them all, once more, even as Bermuda ends up whispering, “Oh, _Dita_ ,” through her fingers, realisation rolling off of her like waves in a storm.

“I'll check in on you all, soon.” The universe promises them, winks, and then promptly crumples to a heap on the ground.

Dirk is suddenly deafened by the world picking up speed again. Bermuda drags herself to Perdita’s side, crying a little, begging her to wake up. Dirk has no idea how they're going to explain this at all.

Bermuda kneels beside the prone body of Perdita, who Dirk now notices is paler than when he last saw her, that she has obviously not been well taken care of as a vessel for the universe. Bermuda shakes her shoulder, and suddenly Farah, Todd, and Ken are upon them.

“Are you okay, are you hurt?” Todd asks him, and he brushes Dirk’s hair back from his face, checking him over for any injury, and he looks so concerned, it makes Dirk’s heart melt a little.

“Yes, I think I’m fine, we’ve sorted out our differences, I think.” Dirk replies, brushing his jeans off. “There’s also, if you were to observe the world around you Todd, the small matter of our unconscious client on the ground.”

Todd looks down, suddenly fully aware of the situation. “Shit.” She stirs and Bermuda’s verbal encouragement, and Todd helps her bring Perdita to her feet. “What the hell happened? You were all standing in different places a moment ago, and now- this is just one of _those things_ , isn’t it?”

Dirk nods, and notices now that Farah has her gun trained on Bart. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. She’s now the deadliest creature in North America, excluding the Yeti.”

Ken glares at him. “Yeti are peaceful, and harmless, how dare you suggest otherwise.”

Dirk grins. “I didn’t know you had a personality.”

Ken raises his brows. “That’s just rude, I have a personality, it’s just the whole of it is me either talking about Sasquatch or complaining about having got shot.”

“Hey, yeah, I’m just wondering if she’s still dangerous, or if I should be putting my gun away, because I really don’t want to shoot when the police are _definitely_ in their way.” Farah interrupts.

“I’m not gonna hurt anyone. Not anyone who don’ deserve hurting, that is.” Bart tells her. Farah keeps a gun trained on her. “I won’t hurt anyone here. Trust me, I woulda already killed ‘em by now if they was _s’pposed_ to be dead.”

Farah hesitantly lets her shooting arm down and disables the weapon, calmly, methodically, one could see the years of training in her practised movements.

“What happened?” Perdita’s voice is croaky, possibly from disuse, though he thinks the cold climate might have more to do with it. She leans heavily on Todd, eyeing Bermuda with tired suspicion.

“Umm, well,” Dirk says before fully thinking out what he’s actually going to tell her. He pauses for a moment, and settles on the truth. “We found the disturbance in your home, or rather, she found us. Meet Bermuda, that’s her on your right. Yes.”

Perdita cringes away from her, and Bermuda seems mildly upset by that development. Dirk knows it will be fixed in no time. If the universe has taken enough care to create them each one person they can rely on, it won’t leave Bermuda without hers for long.

“You were, umm, I don’t want to say possessed, but that does seem the most appropriate term for this circumstance, on your way out of our agency.”

“Possessed by what?” She asks.

“Well, it seemed that you became a vessel for the universe, or whatever is pulling the strings on the other side of this earthly veil. You sort of became a bit of a pawn in a long game, in order to right a well intentioned wrong. Which has now been fixed, in part, thanks to you. Though it doesn’t seem you remember it. In any case, I’m very sorry about that. And,” he shoots a nervous look at Farah, “our company is willing to provide compensation for any emotional or physical trauma that might have been sustained during this time. We extend the _sincerest_ apologies to you.”

She looks a little doubtful on the points of compensation and apologies, but at least she hasn’t fought him on the subject of her being possessed by the Universe. It would have been much harder to explain. Farah is giving him a look of utter disbelief, which he shrugs out, which, in turn, seems to spark a laugh in Todd.

He thinks maybe everything is as it should be now.

Right on cue, sirens start to get close.

“Now, I don’t think any of us want to be arrested today.” Dirk says, addressing everyone on the Sun Deck, including a wary-looking Perdita, a heartbroken Bermuda, an annoyed Ken, and a bored Bart. “So, what do you all say we make a run for it?”

Nodding and brief positive exclamations sound, and they're out of there.

~

Bermuda doesn't really know where to start.

Dita is now wrapped up in one of her patchwork blankets, sipping on warm earl grey tea from a chipped yellow mug, shivering. There's a bowl in front of her full of the noodle soup Bermuda made.

Bermuda can't seem to think straight.

If she didn't know that now wasn't the time to disappear into a small pocket of time to think everything over, for a while, she would. But there's too much to explain. There's too much to apologise about.

Perdita hasn't said a word since they got all settled in at home, after being debriefed by Dirk Gently, and his small, grumpy companion (the taller, slightly less grumpy companion went to the emergency room over a supposed concussion). Nothing besides _thank you_ and _okay_. Bermuda fidgets in her seat.

She really doesn't know where to start.

Dita licks her lips and sets down her tea. Her wavy blonde bangs are hanging slightly in her eyes, she probably needs to get her hair cut, soon.

“Okay,” she says, and Bermuda notes to herself how loud that sounds in her otherwise silent house. Dita clears her throat and looks away from Bermuda. “Okay. So, you've been living in my house for how long?”

Bermuda supposes this must be overwhelming for Perdita. Discovering she's had someone living in her attic, without her knowing, must be pretty creepy. Bermuda hopes the universe can help her to make this right. After all, Dita is supposed to be her Keeper, and if Dirk feels that funny starving kind of feeling for his grumpy Keeper, surely Bermuda will be allowed to have that funny starving kind of feeling as well.

She can only hope, only wish that Perdita could feel that funny starving kind of feeling for her.

It's too soon for that.

“A year.” She says, because there's no point in beginning this friendship with lies. Dita blanches, and licks her lips again. This must be hard on her, especially on top of the actual starving and the possible hypothermia and everything.

“Fuck, _seriously_?” Dita says, and Bermuda bites her lip, an odd quirk she picked up from a waitress at a roadside diner in Oregon.

She nods. “I am sorry. I got a good feeling about this place, when I came here, and a good feeling about you, and I like to trust my gut.” Bermuda stares at her hands, favouring the scraped up sight to the sour look on Dita’s face. “As it turns out, the universe is my gut and it was leading me to you, all along.”

Dita looks taken aback at that, and there is a look in her eyes like she’s just realised she all alone in a room, in a house, with a crazy person. Bermuda feels her hope shrivel up a little more. “You… stayed here because of me?”

She doesn’t know how to reply to that, without sounding unbalanced, untrustworthy, and downright stalker-ish. “I- I do not have anywhere else to go. You may not have been actively interacting with me, but you know, at least you were not mean, or endlessly cruel, or experimenting on me, and- and-“

“Is that your bar for decent human beings? Not experimenting on you? You need to raise that bar.” She remarks, and Bermuda thinks she sees a glimmer of concern, or maybe pity in her face.

Bermuda shrugs. “I’m sorry. For all the trouble I have caused you.”

At this, Dita actually laughs. “Well, I'm pretty sure that I'm fired right now, and I haven't done anything out of the house in ages, so at least there's that.” She sighs in that way that tells Bermuda she is really dreading whatever is to come the next morning. “How did you live here without me ever seeing you? I mean, I'm not the most observant person ever, but that just have taken a hell of a lot of sneaking around, and all floorboards here creak like a son of a bitch.”

She's warmer than before, both physically and emotionally. Bermuda can feel her accepting all the craziness. The starving kind of feeling in her gut is starting up again. She doesn't know why anyone tries to call it butterflies, it's nothing like that.

Bermuda reaches out, slowly, offering Dita her hand, palm facing up. “I can show you.”

There’s something about showing others the gift she has learned to treasure, it’s incredibly magical. Watching their faces turn from doubtful to wonderfilled just about brings back the novelty of her gift that was lost in the long sterile hallways of the Raven’s nest.

Perdita takes her hand hesitantly, it’s warm, a little clammy from holding the soup bowl, and her fingers curl inwards a little against the skin of Bermuda’s wrist.

She doesn’t really need to close her eyes to do this anymore, it was a trick to help her concentrate when they had her doing it at Blackwing, but now, truth is, she could do it at the drop of a hat, but closing her eyes is a sort of habit she’s fallen into. She squeezes her eyes closed, and finds that little link in her mind, a switch she flips, and she feels the air pressure change just slightly, as everything goes stagnant, no air flow, no traffic noise, no bird calls, no constant buzz of the electrical items in the house.

Perfect silence, except for Dita’s staggered breathing as she realises what Bermuda has done.

“ _Did you-_ “ she breathes, and Bermuda opens her eyes to see that in her lap, though not quite, is a bowl of soup in the process of spilling. Dita’s eyes are fixated on the singular sight, and Bermuda disconnects their hands, and reaches over, maneuvering the bowl to scoop the spilling soup out of the air. She places the bowl on the coffee table.

“ _This is how you did it?_ ” The whispering is endearing, and Bermuda appreciates that she doesn’t want to break the silence just as much as she doesn’t.

Bermuda nods minutely, and a bewildered smile splits Dita’s face as she looks around to take in the whole scene.

“Is it outside, too?” She asks, edging toward the windows. She nods again, and Dita draws the curtain, looking out onto her street, and the raindrops frozen in midair. She gasps a little, maybe in delight, maybe from the pure spectacle of it.

There are a few minutes of absolute silence as Dita takes in the wonder of the moment that Bermuda has frozen for her. Then she seems to come to a realisation.

“You mentioned experimentation earlier.” Dita says, tentatively, turning a little away from the window. “Did you-“

“I was taken into custody by a government entity when I was a child.” Bermuda replies, as evenly as she can manage. Despite all outward appearances, talking about The Ravens, even thinking about The Ravens, makes her feel sick.

“How young?” She asks.

She can only shake her head and laugh a little bit, a laugh without humour. “I don’t remember anything before being there.” Bermuda admits.

Dita purses her lips in displeasure at that statement. “They _experimented_ on you?” She sounds outraged. Bermuda bites her lip, again.

“Knowing someone had that capability to do something like this, would you not take any measure to learn as much as you could?” She supposes it's a good question, the kind of question the scientists who strapped her to a table asked themselves to keep themselves sane. To shrug the guilt off. “‘In the name of science’?”

“I would want to wait until they were old enough to consent to any testing.” Dita replies, flushing at her cheeks. She stares at the floor with the kind of intensity that it might just break, beneath her, and swallow her down.

“Not everyone is so kind.” Bermuda says, resignedly.

There is another pause, and Bermuda thinks she has ruined it.

“Why did the…the _universe_ lead you to me?” This question is guarded, and Bermuda can hear all the curiosity behind it, all the vulnerability, all the _hope_. Almost like Dita had been longing for someone to share her life with.

Bermuda tries to find the best way to phrase it. “The concept is new to me, also. I only found out tonight that you are what the universe calls my ‘Keeper’.” She adds quotation marks to make sure Dita sees just how new to this she is. “Beside all the things you were put on this Earth to do, you also…match me, to certain extents. We are meant to meet and stay together, and…”

Dita furrows her eyebrows, cogs turning in her head. “I was made _for you_?”

“Only a little bit! I mean, not quite. I still don't quite understand it, but I'm trying to. It was the universe’s goal in creating me to fix problems, but also to keep me happy.” More lip biting. Dita is looking right at her, now. “In making me, the universe found you, and saw that you would make me happy. You were not _made_ for me, you were _picked_ , just as I was.”

Dita looks terribly conflicted, and Bermuda accepts that this might be the moment that the starving feeling either consumes her, or dies. She's not sure if she's ready for it, quite yet.

“Is Bermuda the name they gave you there?” At Bermuda’s confused expression she adds, “At the place where they experimented on you.”

“Oh.” She nods. She tries not to think of the name the universe called her, the name that rolled off Dita’s tongue in Dita’s voice. She doesn't want that name. That name belonged to someone much too long ago to take it back, now.

“Well then,” Dita begins, in a brighter voice, mildly surprising Bermuda. She strides over to the table and sits, again. “We have to find a suitable substitute. Besides, it’s too long. Umm, Bear? No, no, that’s absolutely wrong. Okay, how about…” a look of concentration comes over her face as she searches for a suitable nickname, and that starving feeling in her gut has finally erupted into flames that threaten to consume her.

“Do you want a nickname or a completely new one?” Dita asks and Bermuda does wonder if she wants it to change at all.

Then she remembers how much that name had stung, at first, and how it ached when they called after her as she climbed that building. She realises she doesn't want it, at least not in full, anymore. She realises she doesn't what to carry that weight on her shoulders, anymore.

Dita peers at her, and then snaps her fingers. “What about ‘Moody’?” She suggests.

She thinks it over. She taps her fingers against the kitchen table. And Moody nods.

Dita reaches out of her quilt and across the table, closing her hand over Moody’s.

They both inhale sharply, the starving kind of feeling rearing up in Moody’s stomach. The world starts again, and Moody isn't quite sure she asked it to.

She doesn't care.

~

Dirk is on the roof again. He's not smoking, but he will be soon, once he gives in.

His fingers are running over the top of the package. He's itching for one. He deserves it, especially after everything, tonight.

The breeze on the roof is cold and unforgiving, and that should be motive enough to go back downstairs. He didn't bring a coat up. He didn't think he'd be up here so long.

But then he started thinking, and once he started, it was very hard to stop.

Bart took the time to tell him where she'd been the past three months.

(“All over the place, really, but mostly Montana,” she'd said. “Some crazy shit went down in Montana. You wouldn't even believe.”)

The good thing is, she seems to forgive him now. Dirk thinks she maybe blames the universe for all the shit that left her trapped in Blackwing. Dirk certainly does. He wonders if his mother would be proud of him, being where he is now. He wonders if she was disgusted that he'd killed.

He decides not to follow that train of thought. That’s a train of thought that can only and will only end with him chain smoking on the roof until Todd eventually comes up to see what’s taking so long.

Todd.

That’s another thing.

Dirk’s not sure if he wants to think about that, either.

Bart and Ken left after they finished debriefing Perdita, after they sent Farah to the emergency room. They didn't say where they were going, but Dirk supposes that it doesn't matter. If he ends up in a situation where he needs them, the universe will lead them to him.

He's not sure he can go back down there. He wants to, he know she does. He thinks about the way Bermuda talked about Perdita, about what she said about Todd - _He might be less angry if you got it together and kissed him_. Dirk wonders if that would even vaguely help.

The door to the roof opens and, low and behold, it's Todd, squinting as he looks out across the dark roof, light spilling out onto the ground from the bulb just inside the door. Dirk slips a cigarette out of the packet and pats his pockets, looking for his lighter, trying to look like he hadn't just been standing up there for maybe fifteen minutes doing nothing.

“Ah, Todd. Fantastic.” Todd looks over at him and begins walking over. “I was just-”

“You left your lighter downstairs.” Todd says to him, holding it out when he's probably only half a meter away. Dirk swears under his breath, taking it from him.

He stuffs it into his pocket and pulls the unlit cigarette from between his lips. “I suppose I can't pretend I've been smoking up here, can I?” Dirk sighs, and sits down on the raised edge of the building.

Todd shakes his head. “No. You can't.” The door swings shut, taking the light with it. Dirk’s eyes begin to adjust to the dark, again. “What's bothering you?”

Dirk frowns. “How do you know something's bothering me?”

He snorts, in turn. “You're ridiculously easy to read.” Then he frowns, as well. “And you've seemed off since that thing at the Space Needle.”

Dirk gazes at the ground that isn't yet clear to him. “I…I just don't know what to do now.” Todd raises an eyebrow, and an incredulous expression spreads across his face. Of course Todd would be surprised. Everything Dirk ever does is with purpose, and now that he doesn't seem to have one, he's flat. “The case is over, everyone is where they should be, my lifelong conflict has been resolved. I feel a bit…useless, I guess.”

“Excuse me for not quite believing that,” Todd says and walks over to sit beside him. He swallows, and Dirk can see the inch of a question on his face. “What…uh, what lifelong conflict?”

Dirk purses his lips. He supposes Todd ought to know, especially now that he won't be going on murder sprees, or beheading potential clients, anymore. “When we met, there were two unusual things that I could do. I had my hunches, and I killed people who needed to be killed. I was only ever supposed to have the hunches. Bart was only ever supposed to kill. However, the universe had to make a very hard decision when we were…nine, I think? My way of living was being threatened, my mother had been murdered right in front of me. A man was going to take me away to the place where Bermuda and Bart were for years. I would be tested and experimented on. Taken apart and inspected so they could figure out how I ticked. The universe decided it didn't want that for me, and it split Bart and I’s abilities, giving me the ability to kill this man, and escape Blackwing’s clutches. This was agony for Bart. Because of the hopeless situation she was in, because of where she was, and the vulnerable mindset she had, the hunches she got, the predictions said she would never escape. And she believed them.

“So, when she met me, it was when the universe finally led me to all of them, to get them out, so she didn’t immediately realise that I was the reason she was so… I guess she realised. And she hated me. I knew her better than anyone else, maybe before you and Farah. But there is a deeper understanding, with our sharing those gifts. We stayed together for a long time. But then she learned why she had been so weak, why all of the worst things had happened to her, and she _hated_ me. Todd, she’s as close as I’m ever going to get to a sister.”

Todd nods, and he knows he’s thinking of his current situation with Amanda, her not calling, having run away with energy vampire men in a dirty van. Her hating him for what he did, justified, if he thinks about it, and he knows that Todd thinks it’s justified

“What happened at the Space Needle to change that?” Todd asks quietly.

“The universe spoke to us. Through Perdita. It used her as a vessel. Apologised, tried to justify its actions, took credit for the best things I've done in my life, which I suppose it should.” Dirk shakes his head. That's not important, no matter how inferior it made him feel. “It switched us back. I can't see who needs to die just by looking at them anymore, and she doesn't get gut-wrenching feelings about things anymore. We’re back the way we always should have been. And while I feel whole again, I also feel quite empty.”

There's a long pause. Dirk doesn't look at Todd. He probably wouldn't know what he was thinking by looking at him, now, anyway. It's too dark to really see him, no matter how close he is.

“Not to take away from your legitimate and fair feelings, but is Perdita going to be okay? After having the whole universe in her head?” Todd eventually says. “I mean, that's got to give you one hell of a migraine.”

Dirk laughs. “I don't think the universe would have done it if it wasn't safe, especially to Bermuda’s Keeper.” And then he realises what he said and claps a hand over his mouth. He didn't want to talk about it, he didn't want Todd to know. He wanted to take that to his grave.

Stupid stupid Dirk. Always blurting out secrets and not thinking ahead in the conversation.

Todd does deserve to know, but Dirk never wanted to feel this vulnerable again.

“Sorry, her what now?” Todd says.

“The person who…keeps the house…she lives in?” Dirk tries, pathetically, if he does say so himself.

“You’re a terrible liar. What does that mean?” Todd asks, his voice steeped in seriousness, but unlike some people, there is nothing dangerous about this tone, nothing threatening.

He feels suddenly safe to tell him.

“It’s a thing that Perdita, the Universe, told us about. She created us, with these gifts or whatever they are. I maintain that I am _not_ psychic. But, she made sure there were people we would come into contact with who would be… right for us. Help protect us, make sure we get where we need to get to, will make sure we are happy.”

Todd is silent. He looks deep in thought, and Dirk wonders what he is thinking, what he might think of Dirk, who seemingly has the entire universe on his side, and who must be realising that he was handmade by said universe through a series of tenuous coincidences, specifically for Dirk.

Then, he speaks up, not looking up. He looks a little sad. “You’re distracted - sad? - because you haven’t found them?”

Dirk’s heart stops at that. He sucks in a sharp breath, and Todd looks up, suddenly, as if Dirk is dying and Todd is the only one to save him. He frowns when he sees Dirk’s face.

“If that's what it is, you can trust me. I'd have thought that was obvious after everything.” Dirk can feel something in him go into a panic. This was somehow worse. This was somehow worse than rejection or pity or disgust. Todd doesn't _know_. “If that's why you feel empty…look, Dirk, I'll help you find them, whoever they are. That'll be our next case. I'm sure Farah will help-”

And Dirk can't listen to him spout off all this supportive shit about ‘finding Dirk’s person’, so he does the only thing he can think of, which just so happens to be grabbing Todd by the back of his head and pressing their lips together.

There is a grating moment of regret, of panic, where all he can think is: _why did I do this?_ Which gives way to excitement as Todd moves closer, and sinks into it, and his own hands come to rest on one of his shoulders and at the nape of his neck.

It’s perfect.

Then they split for a moment, to breathe it seems, though Dirk can’t see why he would need oxygen when he has _Todd_.

“ _Why?_ ” Todd whispers.

“ _You’re it, for me. You’re everything._ ” He whispers back.

Todd brings him back for another kiss, and Dirk thinks that he might be able to get used to this.

~

Bart sits in the stolen car with Ken by her side. She’s banned him from driving ever since she started taking the hunches (and ever since he got shot, nearly _died_ in the driver's seat, but she tries not to think about that) but now that she doesn’t have them, she lets him sit back there, and tries not to think about the last time it was like this, when everything hurt, and Ken might as well have been gone.

She doesn't know what to say. She doesn't know if there's anything _to_ say. She feels like all the words in her dried up, and she's left empty.

Everything has been solved for her. Dirk Gently is no longer the primary villain in her life. The universe has returned her to a state in which she feels she can function. She’s back with Ken in a car, about to head out and do what will fulfill her, knowing now that it is what she was built to do.

But there is something so empty about doing something because you know you have to.

“Bart, are you alright?” Ken asks, looking genuinely concerned, and she wonders if she is alright.

She never wanted Gently’s gift. But it gave her purpose and meaning outside of being the universe’s personal angel of death.

In the end she just shrugs.

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened on that roof?”

She almost laughs at that. She shrugs again. If he’s meant to know it, he’ll find it all out.

She leans over the console and kisses his cheek, close, maybe too close to the corner of his mouth. She sees a blush rising in his cheeks.

“I hope you can drive stick shift.” She replies.

~

**Six Months Later**

Farah presses a button on the coffee machine, and, at the low toned beep, groans. Dirk would laugh if she hadn't just caught him and Todd making out in the kitchenette. Todd promptly went to get lunch and left Dirk alone, in the office with Farah, who is apparently about to go to war with the coffee machine.

Currently, Dirk’s trying to work out a new way of filing all their paperwork - blergh, boring Sunday’s - because Farah has enforced this on him. She claims he doesn't do enough paperwork.

“I do the running!” He had protested. “And you do all the fighting stuff and the guns and the money stuff. If anyone should be doing paperwork, it should be Todd!”

“Todd does enough of his paperwork to justify not doing mine, today.” Farah had harrumphed back, already in a foul mood. “You, on the other hand, procrastinate and sneak your way out of it, and I always end up doing it.”

He had to hand it to her, she was right, and he hated that she was right.

“Just…please, Dirk? I have an important phone call, and these invoices need to be completed by this afternoon.” Her face was imploring, and he did owe her one for the beheading incident. So he took the small stack of papers.

And he filled them all in and faxed them all out, and now is filing them along with stray important files in his desk.

Which, of course, is when Todd comes in with two pizza boxes. He has no idea what Todd might have got for himself for lunch, because he knows for a fact that Todd has witnessed both Dirk and Farah consume a whole pizza by their respective self.

Todd sets the boxes down on Dirk’s desk, and wraps his arms around his shoulders. “What are you doing?”

“Filing.” He replies, because, well, _duh_.

He takes an invoice for a lost dog, and files it under _German Shepard_. Todd stifles a laugh, the vibration of which Dirk feels along his spine. It’s a warm feeling, full of comfort. “Your filing system makes no sense.”

“ _You_ make no sense.” He mumbles as he files an invoice for a murder case under _Dead Client; Strangulation_.

“It’s so disturbing that you have different classifications for dead clients.” Todd tells him, and squeezes round his shoulders tighter.

“I don’t think the fact that our clients keep dying is my fault.” There’s a pause, and he considers this statement. He can practically feel Todd raising his eyebrows pointedly at him. “Except in a few, rare cases.”

Todd leaves that alone for now, they don’t seem to talk about the near twenty five years of his life in which he both directly and indirectly killed people. It makes conversations awkward. Todd, however, even with that reminder, burrows his head into the crook of Dirk’s neck.

“ _I love you._ ” He whispers, and though it is far from the first time he has said it, it won’t be the last time that Dirk’s heart is set alight by those three little words.

“ _I love you, too._ ” He whispers back, and files a receipt for fifteen betta fish under _Expenses; Necessary_. “But, if you think that two pizzas is going to do all three of us, you aren’t as smart as I think you are.”

“Honestly, I was just going to tell you to come home with me, and take both pizzas with us.” Todd leans back, defensively, and a little righteously. “But if you want to share with Farah, far be it from me-“

“I love that plan, but we’re going to have to call delivery for Farah, if you want to avoid the wrath of god.”

Todd laughs. “Sounds like a plan.”

“She’ll throw a fit if I don’t get this done though.”

“ _Pssh_ , you have already gone above and beyond what she asked you to do.”

“But-“

Todd leans back in. “Those are some really nice pants, but honestly I think they’ll look better on my floor.”

“Todd, it’s really bad to leave good trousers on- _oh. Oh, goodness_. Yes, absolutely.”

He looks at the pile of papers he has yet to file, at least an inch thick, and shrugs. If Farah can’t do it, then he can tomorrow. And it’s a _Sunday_ for goodness’ sake. The proper way to spend a Sunday is at home.

Todd pulls him out of his chair, barely waiting for Dirk to close and lock the filing cabinet. Or to grab his jacket. On the way out of the door, Dirk turns and yells to Farah. “Todd says it’s okay to go now!”

“You better have left me food!” Farah shouts from the other room, and they both laugh, completely forgetting both boxes inside the office.

~

“So you’re saying that because I said that I wanted to paint the house, you _paused time_ and went and _stole paint_ , and then spent all that time painting the house, was that _two coats_? God, you’re _perfect!_ ” Perdita exclaims.

The whole living and dining room is painted robins egg blue with white trimmings, just as she’d said she wanted. It had been done in a flash.

Moody grins. She’s covered in flecks of paint, and her hair is done up in a messy bun, with every possible flyaway sticking out, and Perdita cannot believe that this is her life now. “Okay, but we _have_ to go back to the hardware store, and pay for that paint.”

Moody pokes her tongue out between her teeth. “Must we? I do not think they will miss it.” She replies, giving the rooms approving looks.

“While I would love to endorse your life of crime, it's the morally right thing to do.” Perdita says, and turns around, slowly, taking in the new atmosphere. They're six months into being aware of each other, and four months into this tentative relationship, and Moody continues to surprise her. Not always in a good way, sometimes disappearing in the middle of the conversation and returning a split second later with a lengthy story to tell about her heroics, but always quirky, always bright, always Moody.

Perdita wouldn't want it any other way.

It took at least a week to coax her out of sleeping on a pile of clothes she'd meant to give to charity in the attic to the fold out couch, and longer still, after that, to get her to sleep in Perdita’s bed. Perdita counted every step, small as it was, as a triumph.

Moody’s also stopped wearing bizarre combinations of clothes much too small or much too big for her. Perdita took her shopping (to an admittedly very cheap store) to buy clothes that fit and that looked good, and now Moody has a sizeable suitcase’s worth of clothing.

They've settled, hesitantly, and curiously, bumps in the road and all, into this, and she won't deny how natural it feels, and how much she loves it.

Moody rolls her eyes, good naturedly, and shifts a bit to the left, without taking a step, a clear sign that she stopped time to do something. “Everything is now bought and paid for, as you wanted.” She hands Perdita long piece of paper. “Here is the receipt.”

She shakes her head in absolute reverence, and pulls Moody into a hug first, and then pulls back to press a short and sweet kiss to her lips.

“I’m gonna stop telling you what I want done around here or I’m gonna get so bored with nothing to do.” She laughs.

“Or next time we could do it together?” Moody suggests.

“I knew you had a good brain between those ears.”

And she pulls her back in for a longer kiss, and she thinks that having a woman secretly living in her attic for a year isn’t the worst thing that ever happened to her.

That it might just be the best.

~

She sits on a comfortable bed, in the softest robe she has ever touched, eating sweet and sour pork, with the only permanent person in her life, and all she can feel is the absolute elation that comes with knowing your life is perfect for you. Sure, she kills a bunch of people all of the time, but she has the comfort of knowing both that she is doing the right thing, not necessarily morally, but the right thing by the Universe’s measure, and that the person by her side won’t ever leave.

Ken smiles at her, almost like he’s never seen her commit the worst acts on earth, like he’s never seen her drenched in someone else's blood, though the exact opposite is true, that he helped her wash blood out of her hair, and off her skin, and out from under her fingernails, just thirty minutes ago.

She leans into his shoulder, and he wraps a free arm around her waist, and pulls her tight against him.

She feels so safe here, though she can’t imagine he feels the same with the atrocities he’s seen her commit. But he’s still here, still smiling, still teaching her, still finding her delicious food, still looking at her like she put the sun in the sky and started it’s constant spin around the world.

“This is really good.” She rasps. He gives a small laugh, but she can tell it’s not at her expense, that rather it’s affectionate, and she is so happy.

“We still have to get your hair brushed.”

“Later, they’re playin’ somethin’ called ‘The Real Housewives of Texas’ and I want to see these women brutalise each other.”

“You know that they don’t actually commit acts of violence against each other, right?” He asks, still looking amused.

“I don’t know, Ken, the ad showed a woman pullin’ another woman’s hair out, so I think you’re wrong.”

“I’m happy to be proved wrong so long as I can make sure you don’t get matted hair again.”

“Fine. But you can’t pull to hard.”

“It’s hard when you leave it for a month without brushing. Sometimes you don’t give me a choice.”

She shrugs.

“How many bullets do you have left?” He asks.

“Enough.” She replies, and she knows that no one normal would smile at that, but she thinks that being normal must be awfully boring. And she’s never been so thankful that Ken isn’t normal.

~

Later, when Todd is curled up next to him, kind of drifting, not quite asleep, but not awake, either, Dirk takes a second to think, really think about the fact that at the end of it all, after everything he went through, he ended up here. He feels way too lucky. It feels like something out of a dream, like something that cannot be real because how could that sad, scared little boy with dried blood under his fingernails ever fall in love and have a semi-normal, really happy life?

He supposes the universe always meant for him to end up here (maybe not here, specifically in Todd’s bed, skipping work, but certainly with Todd). Dirk supposes the universe never really did want him to be unhappy, he just had to find a way out of the hole he dug for himself.

“You're thinking too loud.” Todd mumbles and turns over, arm splayed across Dirk’s chest, leg across his, head against his shoulder.

“I am not.” Dirk replies, but there's no real heat, no real challenge.

“Shush.” Todd says, and Dirk rolls his eyes, even if Todd can't see.

“Okay, okay.” He relents and lets his hand wander to the back of Todd's head, into the fine hairs there.

Status report. He's happy, which is a lot better than he expected.

  
_fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I really hope you enjoyed the story, and please, if you did, leave a kudos if you haven’t already, or a comment, even if that comment is just ‘consider this extra kudos’. A little validation goes a long way. 
> 
> You can find us on the blue hellsite as @nose-coffee and @cake-snake, feel free to message us, I swear we’re friendly.


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